SOPHIONIGH 
IN  PARIS     f 

,Y  REM  Y-  DE-  GOURMONT 


Philosophic  Nights 
In  Paris 

BY   REMY   DE  GOURMONT 
BEING  SELECTIONS 

FROM 

PROMENADES  PHILOSOPHIQUES 


Translated  by 
Isaac  Goldberg 


JOHN  W.  LUCE  AND  COMPANY 

BOSTON  MCMXX 


Copyright  1920 
By  L.  E.  Bassett 


6  Al 


CONTENTS 


o 
09 


Introduction 5 

Helvetius  and  the  Philosophy  of  Happiness   .  25 

The  Pessimism  of  Leopardi    ....  37 

The  Insurrection  of  the  Vertebrates        .         .  61 
The  Question  of  Free  Will      .         .         .         .75 

Footprints  on  the  Sand            ....  89 

The  Art  of  Seeing 109 

The  Colors  of  Life 131 

The  Rivers  of  France      .         .         .         .         .141 

The  Player's  Illusion       .         .         .         .  153 

Insinuations 165 

The  Fall  of  Days 175 

The  Beyond 185 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  importance  of  Remy  de  Gour- 
mont  to  the  universal  world  of 
thought  is  now  beginning  to  be  re- 
cognized among  thinkers  of  every  continent. 
During  his  own  life  he  was  a  figure  apart  and 
aloof  even  from  his  confreres;  his  reputation 
was  a  matter  more  of  intensity  than  of  ex- 
tensive acclaim,  although  subtly  it  made  its 
way,  as  did  that  of  the  Symbolist  school  in 
general,  to  many  nations.  Now,  however,  he 
is  beginning  to  receive  that  wider  recognition 
which  during  his  life  he  actually  shunned. 
He  belongs  with  the  notable  few  who  have 
devised  and  lived  a  philosophy  of  con- 
tinuous adaptation  to  the  new  knowledge 
that  the  new  day  brings  forth;  he  is  a 
daring,    independent,    unostentatious,    ex- 


PHILOSOPHIC  ■  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

tremely  personal  neo-Epicurean,  too  indi- 
vidualistic to  have  been  held  long  within 
the  circle  of  a  school,  too  sensitive  not 
to  have  responded  to  the  multifarious 
influences  of  a  complex  age.  Yet  just  as 
his  individualism  was  not  the  ignorant 
self-proclamation  of  blatant  mediocrity,  so 
was  his  response  to  the  contemporary  world 
far  more  than  an  aimless  dashing  about 
hither  and  thither  in  a  snobbish  attempt  to 
be  ahead  of  the  times.  The  man's  essen- 
tially dynamic  personality  has  a  genuine 
strain  of  the  classic  in  it;  he  possesses  a 
rare  repose,  an  intellectual  poise,  that 
serves  as  a  most  admirable  complement  to 
his  vibrant  ideas.  Few  writers  have  ever 
so  well  combined  matter  and  manner,  which 
to  Gourmont  were  but  two  aspects  of  one 
and  the  same  thing, —  the  original  thought. 
He  is  not,  and  never  will  be,  a  writer  for 
the  crowd;  he  was,  by  heredity  and  by 
choice,  an  aristocratic  spirit,  yet  as  he  lived 
grew  to  recognize  and  to  admit  the  import- 
ance of  true  democracy. 

6 


INTRODUCTION 

His  chief  importance,  historically,  was 
as  the  recognized  interpreter  of  the  Sym- 
bolistic movement  in  French  poetry;  but 
behind  that  movement  lay  a  genealogy  of 
ideas  which  ramified  into  such  seemingly 
divergent  directions  as  the  pre-Raphaelites 
in  England,  the  Hegelian  idealists  in  Ger- 
many, and  thus  formed  a  modern  manifes- 
tation of  primary  significance.  De  Gour- 
mont,  like  more  than  one  of  the  Symbolists, 
outgrew  the  movement,  which  from  the 
first  was  composed  of  personalities  too 
strong  to  form  a  mere  school.  He  was,  in 
the  words  of  one  of  his  commentators, 
"among  the  first,  if  not  the  first,  to  realize 
the  insufficiency  of  Symbolism,  in  all  that 
did  not  confine  itself  amidst  the  proud 
ivory  walls  of  an  uncompromising  lyricism. 
If  he  did  not  combat  it,  because  he  had  too 
complaisantly  exalted  it,  he  none  the  less 
abandoned  it  more  and  more,  to  surrender 
himself, —  with  no  other  discipline  than  his 
personal  taste  and  his  keen  sense  of  the 
French   genius, —  to   the   fecundity   of  his 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

nature,  retaining  of  the  old  verbal  magic 
only  that  which  might  contribute  to  his 
personal  expansion, —  notably  that  precious 
gift  of  image  and  analogies  which  imparts 
such  poetry,  such  flexibility,  variety  and 
charm  to  his  style.  But  henceforth  the 
idea  (i.  e.,  rather  than  the  word)  assumed 
in  him  a  preponderant  importance,  and 
now  he  was  to  play  with  ideas.  .  .  .as  he  had 
previously  played  with  words  and  images." 

II 

Gourmont's  literary  career  was  particu- 
larly identified  with  the  notable  French 
Review,  the  Mercure  de  France.  How  he 
came  to  join  the  staff  of  that  organ  is  inter- 
estingly recounted  by  Louis  Dumur,  in 
the  same  obituary  note  from  which  the 
above  quotation  was  translated.  Inci- 
dentally we  obtain  a  glimpse  of  the  young 
man  just  as  he  was  emerging  into  note. 

"The  great  writer  whom  we  have  just 
lost,"  wrote  M.  Dumur,  "was  to  us  more 
than  a  friend,  better  than  a  master:    he 


INTRODUCTION 

seemed  to  us  the  most  complete  representa- 
tive, the  very  expression, —  in  all  its  aspects 
and  in  all  its  complexity, —  of  our  literary 
generation. 

"When,  in  the  autumn  of  1889,  the  small 
group  which  proposed  to  found  the  Mercure 
de  France  thought  first  of  adding  several 
collaborators  to  its  number, —  while  one 
went  off  in  search  of  Jules  Renard,  another 
invited  Julien  Leclercq  and  a  third  promised 
the  assistance  of  Albert  Samain, —  the  late 
lamented  Louis  Denise,  who  was  at  that 
time  cataloguer  of  the  Bibliotheque 
Nationale,  said  to  us: 

"'There  is  at  the  Library  an  extraor- 
dinary man  who  knows  everything.  He 
has  already  published  ten  volumes  and  a 
hundred  articles  upon  every  conceivable 
subject/ 

"'We  don't  need  a  scholar,  nor  a  poly- 
graph, but  rather  a  writer  who'll  be  one 
of  us.' 

"'All  he  asks  is  to  be  one  of  us,'  declared 
Denise.     'He  is  filled  with  admiration  for 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

Mallarme  and  swears  only  by  Villiers  de 
l'lsle  Adam.  At  the  present  moment  he's 
writing  a  novel  that  will  be  a  revelation/ 

" '  Bring  along  your  prodigy/ 

"That  prodigy  was  Remy  de  Gourmont. 

"We  did  not  know  him,  not  even  by 
name,  despite  his  vast  literary  labors.  He 
lived  in  seclusion.  He  did  not  frequent 
any  of  our  literary  rendezvous.  He  was 
never  seen  at  the  Francois  Ier,  nor  at  the 
Vachette,  nor  at  the  Voltaire,  nor  at  the 
Chat-Noir,  nor  at  the  Nouvelk-Athenes. 
He  had  not  written  for  any  of  our  little 
reviews,  of  which  he  was  later  to  become  the 
well-informed  historian.  His  signature  had 
not  appeared  in  the  columns  of  Lutece,  la 
Vogue,  the  Decadent,  the  Symboliste,  the 
Scapin,  the  Ecrits  pour  V Art,  nor  in  la 
Pleiade. 

"  But  if  we  did  not  know  him,  he  knew  us 
all,  together  with  the  Acadiens,  the  Lapons, 
the  Italian  verists,  the  English  novelists, 
the  American  humorists,  the  Jesuits, 
balloons,  volcanos,   the   thousand   subjects 

IO 


INTRODUCTION 

upon  which  his  learning  and  his  curiosity 
had  exercised  themselves.  In  publishing 
houses  whose  existence  we  did  not  suspect 
or  in  papers  we  were  hardly  familiar  with, 
we,  too,  in  conjunction  with  the  still  obscure 
and  mysterious  esthetic  movement  which 
we  aspired  to  represent,  formed  the  object 
of  his  labors  and  his  meditations.  This 
newcomer  knew  more  about  our  interests 
than  we  did  ourselves.  He  had  read  our 
most  insignificant  essays.  He  shared  our 
enthusiasms,  our  antipathies,  participated 
in  our  intellectual  research,  discerned  our 
tendencies,  penetrated  into  our  intentions, 
which  already  he  was  arranging  to  formu- 
late, and  to  formulate  for  us  with  as  keen  a 
perspicuity  and  clarity  as  were  permitted 
by  the  concerted  imprecision  of  our  thought 
and  the  hazy,  delicately  shaded,  subli- 
mated art  that  we  had  just  established. 

"From  his  very  first  pages  in  the  Mercure 
de  France^ —  those  Proses  moroses  which 
were  so  perfect  in  form,  so  rare  in  expres- 
sion   and    of   such    singular    subtlety, —  he 

IX 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

revealed  himself  as  an  expert  artist  in  the 
new  coloring,  and  produced  exquisite  models 
of  the  refined  genre  which  charmed  us.  In 
that  same  year,  1890,  he  published  through 
the  firm  of  Savine  the  novel  that  Denise 
had  spoken  about  to  us, —  that  Sixtine 
which  at  once  consecrated  him  as  a  coming 
master  in  the  exacting  eyes  of  our  cenacles. 
'A  novel  of  cerebral  life,'  —  a  precious  sub- 
title,—  and  one  could  find  nothing  better 
to  suggest  the  full  significance  of  this  book, 
which  is  of  disturbing  originality.  Nothing 
took  place  in  it  which  the  regular  public 
calls  by  the  name  of  'action';  everything 
in  it,  was,  indeed,  'cerebral.'  It  was  filled 
with  a  minute,  probing  analysis.  The  hero 
did  not  love  so  much  as  he  observed  him- 
self in  the  process  of  loving.  It  was  charm- 
ing, complicated,  and  marvellously  written. 
"At  the  times  of  its  appearance  the  reac- 
tion against  naturalism  and  the  so-called 
'psychological'  school  of  Bourget  was  at 
its  height.  .  .  .Symbolism  had  been  born, — 
musical,  suggestive,  indirect.     But  if  sym- 

12 


INTRODUCTION 

bolism  had  produced  its  work,  it  had  not 
yet  found  its  formulas.  There  was  inter- 
minable and  indefatigable  discussion  as  to 
just  what  symbolism  was.  And  it  was 
Remy  de  Gourmont  who  undertook  to 
define  it.  He  himself  brought  to  it  perfect 
and  delicate  products.  Among  these,  in 
poetry  and  prose,  were  les  Litanies  de  la 
Rose,  Lilith,  le  Fantome,  Fleurs  de  Jadis, 
Hieroglyphes  and  the  dramatic  poem  Theo- 
dat,  which  was  given  at  the  Theatre  d'Art 
at  the  same  time  as  Maeterlinck's  les 
Aveugles,  Laforgue's  le  Concile  feerique  and 
that  Cantique  des  Cantiques  by  Renaird, 
which  was  accompanied  by  a  luminous, 
fragrant  musical  score  so  that,  by  an 
appropriate  harmony  of  sounds,  voices, 
colors  and  perfumes,  all  the  senses  might  be 
conjointly  struck  by  the  same  symbol." 

Of  Gourmont's  services  to  the  movement 
into  which  he  was  thus  introduced  Camille 
Mauclair,oneof  Mallarme's  intimate  friends, 
has  written: 

"The   theories   of   the   Symbolists    were 

13 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

presented  and  condensed  in  excellent  fashion 
in  the  numerous  books  and  critical  articles 
by  Remy  de  Gourmont,  who  was  not  only  a 
most  original  novelist  and  a  perfect  artist 
in  prose,  but  also  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able  essayists  of  the   nineteenth   century, 
characterized  by  an  astonishing  wealth  of 
ideas,  a  rare  erudition,  and  an  intellectual 
flexibility   that   assured   him   philosophical 
as  well  as  esthetic  culture.     Moralist,  logi- 
cian, poet,  intuitive  as  well  as  deductive, 
passionate  lover  of  ideas,  Remy  de  Gour- 
mont possessed  also  the  merit  of  being  a 
voluntary  recluse,  exceedingly  proud,  cling- 
ing tenaciously  to  his  liberty,  disdaining  all 
fame,  living  as  a  solitary  spirit  and  as  a  man 
truly  above  all  social  prejudices.     His  irony, 
which  excluded  neither  emotion  nor  faith, 
was  but  the  effect  of  a  deep  scorn  of  medioc- 
racy . .  .  .His  whole  life  was  a  model  of  inde- 
pendence....  Remy   de    Gourmont,   better 
than   any  other,   formulated   the   idealism 
which  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  Symbolist 
doctrine." 

14 


INTRODUCTION 

Among  these  services  to  the  new  move- 
ment were  Gourmont's  penetrating  studies 
of  such  figures  as  Mallarme  and  Verlaine, 
Huysmansand  the  de  Gouncourts,  Rimbaud, 
Corbiere,  Villiers  de  ITsle  Adam,  Barbey 
d'Aurevilly,  Stendhal,  Baudelaire,  Maurice 
de  Guerin,  Gerard  de  Nerval,  Aloysius 
Bertrand.  Were  it  not  for  Gourmont,  some 
of  these  would  perhaps  never  have  been 
known,  and  it  does  little  credit  to  our  own 
poetic  advancement  that  some  of  them  are 
still  but  names  to  American  readers.  His 
two  Livres  des  Masques  are  regarded  as  the 
beginnings  of  a  history  of  the  Symbolist 
period,  which  he  never  found  time  to  com- 
plete. Although  many  of  the  writers  were, 
at  the  time  Gourmont  considered  them  here, 
at  the  beginning  of  their  careers,  he  seized 
upon  their  distinguishing  traits  with  a  rare 
insight,  and  revealed  such  coming  celebrities 
as  Maeterlinck,  Verhaeren,  Regnier,  Samain, 
Viele-Griffin,  Tailhade,  Paul  Adam,  Gide, 
Laforgue,  Moreas,  Merril,  Rachilde,  Kahn, 
Jammes,    Paul    Fort,    Mauclair,    Claudel, 

i5 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

Bataille,  Ghil.  He  had  a  discerning  eye  for 
the  painters,  too,  and  revealed  as  well  as 
defended  Whistler,  Van  Gogh,  Gauguin, 
and  others. 

Despite  their  modest  titles,  the  Promen- 
ades philosophiques  and  the  Promenades 
litteraires  have  been  called  "without  doubt 
the  most  important  critical  works  of  our 
epoch."  It  is  from  the  former  that  the 
essays  contained  in  this  book  are  taken; 
they  reveal,  in  striking  degree,  the  thought 
and  the  attitude  of  their  famous  author, 
and  may  suggest, —  though  within  the  limits 
that  all  translation  connotes,  particularly 
when  dealing  with  so  remarkable  a  stylist, — 
the  charm,  the  simplicity,  and  the  clarity 
of  his  writing. 

Ill 

Despite  the  fact  that  his  funeral  services 
occurred  during  the  height  of  the  war  — 
he  was  born  on  April  4,  1858  and  died  on 
September  27,  191 5  —  they  were  attended 
by  a  numerous  gathering  of  mourners  who, 

16 


INTRODUCTION 

in  their  very  cosmopolitan  nature  seemed  to 
symbolize  the  universal  influence  of  the 
departed  genius.  Tributes  were  paid  by 
M.  Henri  de  Regnier,  of  the  French  Acad- 
emy, who  spoke  for  the  Mercure  de  France, 
by  M.  Georges  Lecomte,  President  of  the 
Societe  des  Gens  de  Lettres,  who  spoke  in 
the  name  of  that  society,  by  M.  Maurice 
Ajam,  for  the  newspaper  La  France,  by 
M.  Fernand  Mazade,  in  the  name  of  la 
Depeche  de  Toulouse,  to  which  Remy  de 
Gourmont  was  a  contributor,  by  Xavier 
Carvalho,  in  the  name  of  the  Portuguese  and 
Brazilian  press,  and  by  M.  Juliot  Piquet,  in 
the  name  of  the  great  Buenos  Aires  daily 
La  Nacion  for  which  Gourmont  wrote. 

Regnier  paid  particular  attention  to  the 
critical  labors  of  the  deceased.  Gourmont, 
he  said,  "was  an  incomparable  critic,  in 
turn  a  scholar  untainted  by  pedantry,  deep 
without  obscurity,  ingenious  to  the  point  of 
paradox,  sincere  to  the  point  of  contradic- 
tion, but  ever  mindful  of  the  truth, —  a  critic 
in  the  manner  of  Montaigne,  of  inexhaust- 

}7 


PHILOSOPHIC  ■  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

ible  variety  of  means,  of  the  most  candid 
independence, —  a  critic  who  is  polemist, 
dilettante,  imaginative  spirit  and  poet,  and 
above  all,  a  man,  exceedingly  human  in  his 
alternations  of  skepticism  and  faith." 
Lecomte  pointed  out  the  nobility  of  the 
man's  origin,  and  the  significance  of  his 
ancestral  connection  with  Francois  Mal- 
herbe,  the  great  stylist  of  a  former  age. 
Ajam,  like  most  who  have  commented  on 
the  man  at  all,  was  struck  with  his  para- 
doxical nature.  "A  democrat  of  aristo- 
cratic cast,  an  atheist  filled  with  devotion, 
an  anarchist  characterized  by  order,  an 
agitated  spirit  infused  with  calm,  he  was  a 
human  and  a  divine  paradox.'' 

The  tributes  by  Carvalho  and  Piquet  are 
of  particular  significance.  At  a  time  when 
even  Spain,  the  mother  country,  was  indif- 
ferent to  and  ignorant  of  the  literary  accom- 
plishments of  its  American  colonies,  Remy 
de  Gourmont  had  lent  himself  to  the  inter- 
pretation and  the  revelation  of  the  new 
literary  world  across  the  seas.     He  trans- 

18 


INTRODUCTION 

lated,  criticised  and  supported  an  almost 
unknown  continental  literature.  He  even 
went  so  far  as  to  invent  the  term  neo- 
espagnol  (neo-Spanish)  for  the  modified 
Spanish  spoken  in  the  various  republics  of 
the  New  World, —  a  proceeding  which 
though  philologists  may  consider  it  rash, 
may  yet  be  considered  premature  rather 
than  totally  mistaken.  And  in  any  event 
it  shows  the  man's  ready  response  to  new 
currents  in  speech  and  thought,  whether 
native  or  foreign.  "By  his  precious  writ- 
ings for  the  reviews  and  the  great  dailies  of 
Argentina  and  Brazil,"  said  Carvalho,  "he 
rendered  lasting  service  to  the  neo-Latin 
literatures."  M.  Piquet's  speech  was  short, 
yet  pithy  in  its  evidence  of  an  entire  conti- 
nent's appreciation. 

"I  should  not  venture  to  approach  this 
tomb  if  I  did  not  possess  in  this  solemn 
moment  the  impersonality  of  a  symbol. 

"A  few  words  will  suffice  for  me  to  fulfil  in 
its  formal  character  the  dolorous  and  too 
burdensome  task  that  accident  has  imposed 

19 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

upon  me.  I  come,  in  the  name  of  the  jour- 
nal La  Nation  of  Buenos  Ayres,  to  pay  the 
last  respects  to  its  former  contributor  Remy 
de  Gourmont,  the  writer,  the  thinker  who, 
for  many  years,  helped  in  powerful  measure 
to  maintain,  on  the  distant  shores  of  the 
La  Plata,  admiration  and  love  for  the  land 
of  clarity  and  moderation,  justice  and 
liberty,  of  which  he  was  one  of  the  purest 
glories." 

IV 

The  complete  works  of  Remy  de  Gour- 
mont cover  almost  every  form  of  intellectual 
activity.  He  seems  equally  at  home  in 
criticism,  in  creative  effort, —  novel,  play, 
poem, —  philosophy  (Nietzsche  owes  much 
to  him  for  his  intellectual  acclimatization 
in  France),  in  the  transvaluation  of  moral 
values,  in  social  criticism,  in  certain  aspects 
of  science,  in  philology,  in  the  renovation 
of  rhetoric.  "In  his  divers  attitudes  and 
in  his  varied  researches,"  says  Dumur,  "he 
was  the  expression  of  our  instable  epoch .... 
20 


INTRODUCTION 

When  the  most  distant  posterity  shall  wish 
to  form  an  idea  of  what  we  were  between 
the  years  of  yesterday's  estheticism  and 
tomorrow's  neo-classic  realism,  of  what 
our  immense  literary  production  was,  of 
what  the  generation  was  which  bridged  the 
conflict  of  1870  and  the  great  war  which 
began  in  19 14,  the  page  it  will  have  to  read 
will  be  signed  Remy  de  Gourmont." 

The  importance  of  this  writer,  however, 
cannot  be  limited  to  France;  by  token  of 
his  broad,  tolerant  humanism  and  his 
dynamic  method  he  belongs  to  the  literature 
that  abolishes  boundaries  and  epochs. 


21 


HELVETIUS  AND  THE  PHILOSOPHY 
OF  HAPPINESS 


HELVETIUS  AND  THE  PHILOSOPHY 
OF  HAPPINESS 


M. 


UTk  If  HELVETIUS, in  his  youth,"  says 
Chamfort,  "was  as  handsome  as 
love  itself.  One  evening,  as  he  was 
seated  very  peacefully  before  an  open  fire, 
at  the  side  of  Mile.  Gaussin,  a  renowned 
financier  came  and  whispered  into  this 
actress's  ear,  loud  enough  for  Helvetius 
to  hear:  'Mademoiselle,  would  it  be  agree- 
able to  you  to  accept  six  hundred  louis  in  ex- 
change for  a  few  favors?'  —  'Monsieur,' 
she  replied,  loud  enough  to  be  heard  by 
Helvetius,  and  pointing  to  him  at  the  same 
time,  '  I'll  give  you  two  hundred  of  them  if 
you  will  kindly  call  on  me  tomorrow  morn- 
ing with  that  fellow  over  there.' ' 

25 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

Helvetius  was  not  content  with  being 
very  handsome.  He  was  also  exceedingly 
wise,  very  rich,  and  very  happy.  No 
mortal,  perhaps,  received  so  many  gifts 
from  the  gods,  the  rarest  of  which  was 
Mme.  Helvetius,  one  of  the  most  charming 
and  gifted  women  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Like  her  husband,  she  was  very  beautiful, — 
so  beautiful  that  persons  paused,  struck 
with  admiration,  to  look  at  her.  There  is, 
in  this  connection, —  quoting  again  from 
Chamfort, —  a  very  pretty  anecdote: 

"M.  de  Fontenelle,  aged  ninety-sevei, 
having  just  uttered  to  Mme.  Helvetius, 
young,  beautiful  and  newly  wed,  a  thousand 
amiable  and  gallant  remarks,  passed  by  her 
to  take  his  place  at  table,  without  raising 
his  eyes  to  her.  'You  can  see,'  said  Mme. 
Helvetius,  'how  much  stock  I  may  take  in 
your  compliments;  you  pass  me  by  with- 
out so  much  as  looking  at  me.'  'Madame,' 
replied  the  old  man,  'if  I  had  looked  at  you, 
I  would  not  have  passed  by." 

Happiness  is  often  egotistical.     It  is  even 

26 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

a  question  whether  a  certain  egotism  is  not 
necessary  to  the  acquirement  of  a  certain 
happiness.  Helv6tius  gave  a  peremptory 
denial  to  these  sorry  notions.  Happy  him- 
self, he  had  but  one  passion:  the  happiness 
of  humanity.  He  noticed,  in  his  observa- 
tion of  mankind,  that  the  natural  desire  to 
be  happy,  which  each  of  us  bears  within,  is 
opposed  by  a  thousand  prejudices,  the  most 
terrible  of  which  are  the  religious  prejudices, 
and  he  determined  to  combat  them  with  all 
his  strength.  M.  Albert  Keim,  who  knows 
Helvetius  better  than  any  other  man  in 
France,  has  just  republished  certain  notes 
written  in  the  philosopher's  hand;  the  first 
of  which  runs  thus: 

"Prejudices.  They  are  to  the  mind  what 
ministers  are  to  monarchs.  The  latter 
prevent  their  rivals  from  approaching  the 
king,  and  in  the  same  way  prejudices  pre- 
vent truths  from  reaching  the  mind,  for 
fear  of  losing  the  power  they  usurp  over  it." 

One  of  the  most  widespread  prejudices  is 
that  which  considers  it  impossible  to  attain 

27 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

happiness;  as  that  does  not  prevent  us  from 
desiring  it,  such  an  idea  corrupts  life  and 
often  renders  it  unbearable.  Priests  have 
believed  that  they  could  remedy  this  by 
inventing  a  second  life,  where  the  person 
who  has  consented  to  be  quite  unhappy  in 
the  first  will  find  at  last  a  sort  of  equivocal 
happiness,  little  calculated  to  tempt  one  of 
intelligence.  The  people,  nevertheless,  snap 
at  this  bait  and  accept,  in  view  of  future 
recompense,  the  direst  tribulations  of  the 
present  life.  Thus  a  frightful  slavery  is 
perpetuated,  for  it  is  very  evident  that  all 
this  is  nothing  but  a  hoax  and  an  imposi- 
tion. Whoever  wishes  to  taste  happiness, 
if  this  word  stands  for  anything  more  than  a 
dream,  should  set  about  it  in  this  life,  since 
the  other  one  is  but  a  chimera,  lucrative 
for  the  clergy  alone.  But  how  be  happy? 
Through  virtue?     Very  well,  what  is  virtue? 

"Virtue,"  replies  Helvetius,  "is  only  the 
wisdom  which  harmonizes  passion  with 
reason  and  pleasure  with  duty." 

He  assigns  a  large  place  in  life  to  pleasures 

28 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

and  passions;  but  he  does  not  consider  them 
only  as  elements  of  happiness;  he  makes  of 
them  sources  of  activity.  Man  instinctively 
seeks  pleasure.  When  he  has  experienced 
it,  and  later  loses  it,  he  will  work  with  all  his 
might  to  win  it  anew.  All  forms  of  pleas- 
ure, then,  are  easily  reconcilable  to  virtue. 
Who  knows  whether  pleasure  taken  in  wise 
moderation  is  not  virtue  itself?  And  he 
dares  to  write  this  maxim,  which  will  per- 
haps frighten  some :  One  is  never  guilty  when 
one  is  happy.  Helvetius,  who  was  a  very 
gentle  and  kind  person,  is  often,  in  his 
writings,  rashly  bold.  His  intimate  notes 
are  violent,  impassioned,  even  brutal.  He 
speaks  in  them  of  love  with  magnificent 
frankness,  and  one  readily  divines  that  it  is 
chiefly  in  the  exercise  of  this  amiable  virtue 
that  he  found  happiness. 

I  am  not  at  all  writing  here  a  study  of 
Helvetius,  one  of  the  most  skilful  demolish- 
ers  of  the  ancient  regime;  I  am  running 
through  a  portfolio  of  private  notes,  printed 
at  first  in  a  few  copies,  and  the  reading  of 

29 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

which  will  reveal  at  once  an  ingenious 
philosopher  and  the  most  spirited  of  poets. 
He  is,  on  the  subject  of  love,  inexhaustible; 
he  is  in  turn  tender,  subtle,  passionate, 
raving.  His  delirious  attacks  are  of  a 
beautiful  candor;  the  majority  of  his 
thoughts  are  charming  and  most  seductive: 
"Each  moment  of  pleasure  is  a  gift  of  the 
gods." 

This  verse,  which  would  be  greatly  ad- 
mired and  celebrated  if  it  had  been  found 
in  Andre  Chenier, —  does  it  truly  come  from 
the  pen  of  Helvetius?  This  is  what  M. 
Albert  Keim  asks  himself.  That  is  a 
query  to  propound  to  the  erudite  spirits  of 
rintermediaire^  who  have  read  all  the  old 
authors;  in  the  meantime  I  consider  it  as 
being  highly  characteristic  of  the  philosophy 
and  the  poetry  of  the  author  of  Bonheur 
(Happiness).  One  can  imagine  nothing 
more  pagan,  more  gently  anti-Christian. 
And  anti-Christianism  is  the  real  basis  of 
Helvetius'  philosophy.  He  oversteps  the 
bounds  a  trifle  when  he  adds:   "Pleasure  is 

30 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

the  sole  occupation  of  life."  The  ardor  of 
this  young  man  is  excessive.  He  himself 
will  soon  learn  and  declare  that  life  has  other 
employments,  such,  for  example,  as  com- 
posing a  philosophy. 

His  second  motto  will  be:  "Minerva  and 
Venus  in  turn,"  which  is  wisdom  itself; 
he  will  devote  himself  to  plucking  at  once 
"the  fruits  of  reason  and  the  fruits  of  pleas- 
ure." He  is  forever  recurring  to  voluptu- 
ousness, whose  images  pursue  him:  "Who 
takes  all  pleasures  takes  very  few  of  them." 
Love  to  him  is  the  most  noble  of  passions 
because  it  is  the  fecund  passion  and  mother 
of  life.  This  is  what  makes  him  say:  "It 
is  not,  moreover,  without  a  certain  secret 
melancholy,"  for,  he  avers,  "The  flower 
that  one  plucks  is  ready  to  wither." 

Do  you  wish  to  see  him  in  his  role  of  a 
serious  philosopher?  He  will  say,  as  if  he 
foresaw  the  war  against  science,  in  which, 
in  our  own  days,  we  have  seen  the  Veuillots 
and  the  Brunetieres  distinguish  themselves: 
"There  are  things  over  which  the  veil  of 

3i 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

skepticism  should  be  spread;  but,  in  the 
matter  of  science,  it  would  be  necessary,  in 
order  to  win  the  right  of  skepticism,  to  know 
all  that  the  human  mind  may  learn:  then 
one  might  permit  himself  to  declare  that 
science  is  nothing."  Like  the  modern  posi- 
tivists,  like  Renan,  remarks  M.  Keim, 
Helvetius  had  the  greatest  confidence  in 
science.  He  is  forever  celebrating  the 
triumphs  of  human  intelligence.  He  be- 
lieves in  progress,  in  the  transformation  of 
society  by  the  scientific  mind.  Thus  he 
launched  a  powerful  attack  against  Rous- 
seau's thesis  upon  the  ills  of  civilization. 
Yet  at  times  one  notes  in  him  a  little  dis- 
couragement, and  he  will  confess:  "Almost 
all  philosophical  views  are  worthless.  Not 
that  they  are  not  excellent,  but  because 
there  are  too  few  persons  who  can  under- 
stand them." 

The  number  of  persons  who  can  under- 
stand Helvetius  has  greatly  increased,  and 
besides,  it  is  not  so  difficult  as  he  believed; 
all  one  needs  is  a  little  common  sense.     It  is 

32 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

a  good  sign  of  our  intellectual  health  that 
Helvetius  is  coming  back  into  fashion. 
Tomorrow  it  will  be  d'Holbach,  d'Alembert, 
Tracy,  the  master  of  Stendhal, —  all  those 
eighteenth-century  philosophers  who  are  so 
clear,  so  simple,  so  human.  The  absurd 
German  metaphysics  has  annihilated  them 
for  sixty  years,  but  it  seems  that  the  day  of 
their  revenge  has  come.  The  dry  notion 
of  abstract  duty  according  to  Kant  has  out- 
lived its  day.  It  is  beginning  to  be  under- 
stood that  man's  first  duty  is  to  be  happy. 
Otherwise,  what  is  the  use  of  living? 


33 


THE  PESSIMISM  OF  LEOPARDI 


V 


THE  PESSIMISM  OF  LEOPARDI 

LEOPARDI  has  never  been  widely 
read  in  France.  While  Schopen- 
hauer  has  achieved  a  certain  lite- 
rary popularity,  Leopardi  has  remained, 
even  for  scholars,  in  the  shade.  This  is 
due  in  large  measure  to  the  mediocrity 
of  his  translators  and  his  commentators..  .  . 
Leopardi's  poetry  is  difficult  to  enjoy. 
M.  Turiello  says  that  it  is  obscure  even  to 
Italians  of  the  present  generation.  It  is 
true  that  Leopardi  is  somewhat  addicted 
to  archaism  and  that,  moreover,  the  Italian 
language  has  since  his  day  undergone  rapid 
development  under  the  influence  of  French. 
His  prose,  despite  its  severe  form,  now  too 
concise  and  now  a  trifle  oratorical,  is  more 

37 


3224 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN     PARIS 

approachable. . . .  But  if  translation,  is  al- 
ways a  difficult  task,  it  is  particularly 
difficult  to  translate  Leopardi. 

In  prose  as  in  verse  he  is  a  pessimist 
more  by  nature  than  as  a  result  of  reason- 
ing. It  is  his  sensibility  rather  than  his 
intellect  that  speaks.  He  constructed  no 
system;  he  gathers  his  impressions,  his 
observations,  and  attempts,  not  without 
arbitrariness,  to  generalize  them.  His 
philosophy  is  entirely  physiological:  the 
world  is  bad  because  his  personal  life  is 
bad.  He  conceives  the  world  in  most 
terrifying  fashion,  and  supposes  that  if  all 
men  do  not  judge  it  as  he  does,  it  is  because 
they  are  mad.  Optimism,  in  fact,  is  fairly 
widespread.  While  there  is  life  there  is 
hope.  The  fable  of  Death  and  the  Wood- 
cutter is  a  fair  symbol  of  humanity's  out- 
look. On  the  other  hand  it  is  certain  that 
literatures  and  philosophies,  even  those 
which  aim  to  produce  laughter  as  well  as 
those  which  exalt  life,  are  generally  pessi- 
mistic.    There  is  a  tragic  background  to 

38 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  .  IN  .  PARIS 

Moliere's  plays  and  a  gloomy  background 
to  Nietzsche's  aphorisms.  Absolute,  beatific 
optimism  is  compatible  only  with  a  sort  of 
animal  insensibility  and  stupidity:  only 
idiots  are  constantly  laughing  and  are 
constantly  happy  to  be  alive.  Absolute 
pessimism,  however,  can  develop  only  in 
certain  depressed  organisms:  its  extreme 
manifestations  are  plainly  pathological  and 
connected  with  maladies  of  the  brain. 

Schopenhauer  affirms  that  life  is  evil, 
yet  he  loves  it  and  enjoys  it.  Let  fame 
come,  and  he  expands  with  cheer.  His 
character  is  by  no  means  gloomy.  He  is  at 
the  same  time  a  philosopher  and  a  humor- 
ous writer.  Leopardi  never  knew  these 
expansions.  He  affects  to  despise  even 
glory,  for  which  he  nevertheless  labors. 
But  he,  too,  is  a  keen,  witty  spirit,  al- 
though ever  bitter;  and  he,  too,  is  a  humor- 
ist. He  certainly  takes  pleasure  in  writing. 
If  he  does  not  know  life's  other  joys,  he 
knows  that  of  being  able  to  impart  a 
beautiful,  puissant  form  to  a  lucid  thought. 

39 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

Nevertheless  his  existence,  much  more 
logical  than  Schopenhauer's,  is  in  exact 
accord  with  his  philosophy.  Sickly,  iso- 
lated, not  understood,  Leopardi  lacked  the 
strength  to  react;  but  if  he  allowed  himself 
to  be  swept  along  by  his  sadness,  it  was  at 
least  in  full  knowledge  of  the  fact.  He 
questions  his  despair  and  enters  into  dis- 
cussion with  it.  And  this  questioning 
presented  us  with  those  fine  dialogues 
which,  together  with  a  few  thoughts,  were 
gathered  together  under  the  title  Operette 
Morali. 

Leopardi  died  in  1837.  His  writings 
seem  of  this  very  day.  Almost  all  the 
questions  touched  upon  with  unparalleled 
sagacity  in  the  Dialogue  Between  Tristan 
And  A  Friend  are  such  as  still  interest 
philosophers  and  critics.  "I  understand," 
says  Tristan,  ''and  I  embrace  the  deep 
philosophy  of  the  newspapers,  which,  by 
killing  off  all  other  literature  and  all  other 
studies  of  too  serious  and  too  little  amusing 
a  nature,  are  the  masters  and  the  beacon- 
40 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

light  of  the  modern  age."  Already,  in  his 
day,  the  flatterers  of  the  crowd  were  saying, 
like  the  Socialists  of  today:  "Individuals 
have  disappeared  in  the  face  of  the  masses." 
Already  sober  stupidity  affirmed:  "We 
live  in  an  epoch  of  transition,"  as  if,  re- 
sumes Tristan,  all  epochs  and  all  centuries 
were  not  a  transition  toward  the  future! 

The  theme  itself  of  the  dialogues  is  the 
idea  of  the  wickedness  of  life  and  the  ex- 
cellence of  death.  It  recurs  time  and  again 
and  Leopardi  manages  to  avoid  monotony 
only  by  the  ingeniousness  of  his  imagina- 
tion, the  beauty  of  his  style,  the  keenness 
of  his  wit.  For  example,  the  magnificent 
passage  in  which,  after  having  said  that 
although  the  world  is  rejuvenated  every 
spring  it  is  continually  growing  older,  he 
announces  the  supreme  death  of  the  uni- 
verse: "Not  a  vestige  will  survive  of  the 
entire  world,  of  the  vicissitudes  and  the 
infinite  calamities  of  all  things  created. 
An  empty  silence,  a  supreme  calm  will  fill 
the   immensity   of  space.     Thus   will   dis- 

41 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

solve  and  disappear  this  frightful,  prodi- 
gious mystery  of  universal  existence,  before 
we  have  been  able  to  understand  or  clarify 
it. 

Without  a  doubt.  But  in  the  mean- 
time we  must  live,  or  else  die.  And  if  we 
choose  to  live,  it  is  reasonable  to  do  our 
best  to  adapt  ourselves  to  life.  Pessimism 
has  but  the  slightest  of  philosophical  value. 
It  is  not  even  a  philosophy;  it  is  literature, 
and,  too  often,  rhetoric.  This  man  is  a  bit 
ridiculous,  tranquilly  pursuing  his  exist- 
ence, daily  adding  a  page  to  his  litany  of 
death's  delights.  In  short,  Leopardi,  like 
many  another  man,  humble  or  exalted, 
suffers  from  not  being  happy;  his  origi- 
nality consists  less  in  taking  pleasure  in 
his  suffering,  which  is  not  very  rare,  than 
in  finding  reasons  for  this  pleasure  and 
expounding  them  logically  and  resolutely. 
His  sincerity  is  absolute. 

Considered  in  opposition  to  the  base 
reveries  of  the  promissors  of  happiness, 
this  literature   is   useful.     But  it  is   good 

42 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

that  it  should  be  rare,  for  if  we  finally  got 
to  take  pleasure  in  it  alone,  it  would  prove 
only  depressing.  Life  is  nothing  and  it  is 
everything.  It  is  empty  and  it  contains 
all.  But  what  does  the  word  life  mean? 
It  is  an  abstraction.  There  are  as  many 
lives  as  there  are  living  individuals  in  all 
the  animal  species.  These  lives  are  de- 
veloped according  to  curves  and  windings 
of  infinite  variety.  It  is  the  height  of  folly 
to  bring  a  single  judgment  to  bear  upon  the 
multitude  of  individual  lives.  Some  are 
good,  others  bad,  the  majority  colorless, 
according  to  every  possible  degree.  In  this 
order  of  facts  there  is  no  justice,  and  the 
reign  of  justice  is  particularly  chimerical 
in  this  case,  because  the  joys  and  sorrows 
of  a  life  are  related  far  less  to  the  events 
by  which  it  is  crossed  than  to  the  physio- 
logical character  of  the  individual. 

Abstractions  do  us  much  harm  by  im- 
pelling us  to  the  quest  of  the  absolute  in 
all  things.  Joy  does  not  exist,  but  there 
are  joys:   and  these  joys  may  not  be  fully 

43 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

felt  unless  they  are  detached  from  neutral 
or  even  painful  conditions.  The  idea  of 
continuity  is  almost  self-negating.  Nature 
makes  no  leaps;  but  life  makes  only 
bounds.  It  is  measured  by  our  heart- 
beats and  these  may  be  counted.  That 
there  should  be,  amid  the  number  of  deep 
pulsations  that  scan  the  line  of  our  exist- 
ence, some  grievous  ones,  does  not  permit 
the  affirmation  that  life  is  therefore  evil. 
Moreover,  neither  a  continuous  grief  nor  a 
continuous  joy  would  be  perceived  by 
consciousness. 

Whether  we  deal  with  the  transcendental 
theories  of  Schopenhauer  or  the  melan- 
choly assertions  of  Leopardi,  we  arrive  at 
the  same  conclusion.  Pessimism  is  not 
admissible,  any  more  than  is  optimism. 
Heraclitus  and  Democritus  may  be  dis- 
missed back  to  back,  while  fearlessly  and 
with  a  moderate  but  resolute  hope,  we  try 
to  extract  from  each  of  our  lives, —  we  men, 
—  all  the  sap  it  contains,  even  though  it 
be  bitter. 

44 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  .  IN  •  PARIS 

Leopardi  was  not  only  the  poet  and  the 
moralist  of  despair.  At  the  age  of  seven- 
teen he  had  already  achieved  note  as  a 
scholar  and  a  Hellenist,  with  his  Essay 
Upon  Popular  Errors  Of  The  Ancients 
(1815).  During  the  two  years  that  fol- 
lowed he  produced  several  dissertations  on 
the  Batrachomyomachia,  on  Horace,  on 
Moscus,  and  Greek  odes  in  the  manner  of 
Callimachus,  the  perfection  of  which  was 
such  that  it  was  believed  some  forgotten 
manuscript  had  been  brought  to  light. 
Niebuhr  affirmed  in  1822  that  the  Notes 
On  The  Chronicle  of  Eusebus  would  have 
done  honor  to  the  foremost  German  philol- 
ogists. Leopardi  had  reached  this  point 
when  in  a  flash  his  personal  genius  was 
revealed  to  him,  and  then  there  appeared 
his  Poems,  followed  by  his  Moral  Tracts. 
He  died  at  the  age  of  thirty-nine  (1837), 
leaving  a  series  of  labors  of  which  each 
separate  division  achieves  perfection:  the 
scholar,  the  poet,  the  writer  of  prose,  the 
translator,    the    man    of   wit    are    equally 

45 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

admirable  in  Leopardi.  Were  it  not  for 
the  lingering  illness  that  accompanied  his 
deeply  sensitive  career,  he  would  have  been 
one  of  the  most  luminous  geniuses  of 
humanity.  His  originality  lies  in  his  hav- 
ing been  the  most  sombre. 

II 

"The  three  greatest  pessimists  who  ever 
existed,"  said  Schopenhauer  one  day, — 
"that  is  to  say,  Leopardi,  Byron  and  my- 
self,—  were  in  Italy  during  the  same  year, 
1818-1819,  and  did  not  make  one  another's 
acquaintance!"  One  of  these  "great  pes- 
simists," Leopardi,  happened  just  at  this 
time  to  be  writing  a  little  dialogue  that 
might  well  be  reprinted  at  the  beginning  of 
every  year.     It  would  always  seem  new. 

Life  is  bad,  says  Leopardi,  and  here  is 
the  proof:  nobody  has  ever  found  a  man 
who  would  wish  to  live  his  life  over  again 
exactly  as  it  happened  at  first:  —  who 
would  wish  even,  at  the  beginning  of  a  new 
year,  to  have  it  exactly  the  same  as  the 

46 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

year  just  past.  What  we  love  in  life  is  not 
life  such  as  it  is,  but  rather  life  such  as  it 
might  be,  such  as  we  desire  it  to  be. 

But  since  this  Dialogue  Between  The 
Passer-By  And  The  Almanac- Vendor,  if 
it  has  ever  been  translated,  has  remained 
buried  in  unreadable  volumes,  here  is  a 
version  of  this  excellent,  though  somewhat 
bitter,  page: 

The  Almanac-Vendor. —  Almanacs,  new 
almanacs!  New  calendars!  Will  you  buy 
some  almanacs,  sir? 

The  Passer-by. —  Almanacs  for  the  new 
year? 

Vendor. —  Yes,  sir. 

Passer-by. —  Do  you  think  it  will  be  a 
happy  one, —  this  coming  year? 

V. —  Oh,  yes,  sir!     Certainly! 

P. —  As  happy  as  the  one  just  past? 

V. —  Oh !     Far,  far  more  so ! 

P. —  As  happy  as  the  one  before  that? 

V. —  Far,  far  more. 

P. —  As  happy  as  which  other  one,  then  ? 

47 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS     IN     PARIS 

Wouldn't  you  be  glad  to  have  the  coming 
year  the  same  as  any  one  of  the  recent  years  ? 

V. —  No,  sir.  No.  That  would  hardly 
please  me. 

P. —  How  long  have  you  been  selling 
almanacs? 

V. —  For  twenty  years,  sir. 

P. —  Which  of  those  twenty  years  would 
you  prefer  the  new  year  to  resemble? 

V. —  I?     I  don't  know. 

P. —  Can't  you  recall  some  year  that 
seemed  happy  to  you? 

V. —  Upon  my  word,  no,  sir. 

P. —  Yet  life  is  a  good  thing,  isn't  it? 

V. —  Oh,  yes  indeed ! 

P. —  You  would  be  willing  to  live  these 
twenty  years  all  over  again,  and  even  all 
the  years  since  you  were  born? 

V. —  I  should  say  so,  my  dear  sir.  And 
would  to  God  that  were  possible! 

P. —  Even  if  this  life  were  to  be  exactly 
the  same  that  you  lived  before, —  no  more 
no  less, —  with  the  same  pleasures  and  the 
same  sorrows? 

48 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

V. —  Oh,  that!     Indeed  no! 

P. —  Then  what  sort  of  life  would  you 
wish? 

V. —  Just  a  life,  that's  all, —  such  as  God 
would  grant  me,  without  any  other  condi- 
tions. 

P. —  A  life  left  to  accident,  of  which 
nothing  would  be  known  in  advance, —  a 
life  such  as  the  coming  year  brings? 

V. —  Exactly. 

P. —  That's  what  I,  too,  would  desire, 
if  I  had  my  life  to  live  over  again, —  what 
I  and  everybody  else  would  wish  for. 
But  that  means  that  fate,  up  to  this  very 
day,  has  treated  us  badly.  And  it  is 
rather  easy  to  see  that  the  common  opinion 
is,  that  in  the  past  evil  has  triumphed 
greatly  over  good,  since  nobody,  if  he  had 
to  go  over  the  same  road  again,  would 
consent  to  be  reborn.  That  life  which  is 
good  is  not  the  life  we  know,  but  the  life 
we  do  not  know, —  the  life  ahead  of  us. 
Beginning  with  the  new  year,  fate  is  going 
to  deal  kindly  with  us, —  with  you  and  me 

49 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

and  everybody, —  and  we  are  going  to  be 
happy. 

V. —  Let  us  hope  so. 

P. —  Well,  let  me  see  your  handsomest 
almanac. 

V. —  Here  you  are,  sir.  It  costs  thirty 
cents. 

P. —  Here's  your  money. 

V. —  Thanks,  sir.  See  you  again.  Al- 
manacs!    New  almanacs!     New  calendars! 

There  is,  perhaps,  a  slight  error  in 
Leopardi's  reasoning.  It  is  not  because 
our  life  has  been  bad  that  it  would  be  a 
burden  to  begin  it  all  over  again.  Even 
a  happy  life  lived  twice  would  scarcely 
possess  any  greater  pleasures.  The  ele- 
ment of  curiosity  must  be  taken  into 
account.  There  is  no  human  being,  how- 
ever resigned  to  the  monotony  of  a  be- 
calmed existence,  who  does  not  in  the 
bottom  of  his  heart  hope  for  some  unfore- 
seen event. 

But  is  it  really  true  that  this  idea  is  not 

50 


PHILOSOPHIC  ■  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

contained  in  Leopardi's  dialogue?  It  is 
there,  although  hidden,  and  doubtless  I 
have  taken  it  from  there.  Wherever  it 
may  come  from,  it  is  true,  at  least  if  it  be 
applied  to  life  as  a  whole.  For  everybody 
cherishes  the  remembrance  of  hours,  and 
sometimes  days,  which  he  would  gladly 
live  over  again.  It  is  often  one  of  the 
occupations  of  men  to  seek  to  create  in 
their  lives  circumstances  that  plunge  them 
for  a  moment  back  into  the  joys  of  the 
past,  even  if  they  must  pay  for  this  momen- 
tary resurrection  with  subsequent  pain. .  . . 
Leopardi,  who  was  a  distinguished  phi- 
lologist, an  excellent  Hellenist,  a  great  poet 
and  an  ingenious  philosopher,  endowed 
with  eloquence,  was  unable  to  discover 
happiness  or  even  peace  in  the  exercise  of 
these  multiple  gifts.  His  health  was  of 
the  most  wretched;  his  heart,  left  empty, 
sounded  in  his  bosom  at  the  slightest  shock; 
he  was  timid  and  his  nerves  quivered  at 
every  jar,  like  those  harps  which  were  in 
fashion   during   his   youth.     He   was   born 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

four  years  before  Victor  Hugo  and  died 
young,  without  having  tasted  fame,  while 
Manzoni,  who  was  destined  to  fill  an  entire 
century,  had  been  for  a  long  time  known 
throughout  Europe.  Is  the  source  of 
Leopardi's  pessimism  to  be  sought  among 
these  divers  causes?  That  is  hard  to 
believe.  The  invalid,  far  from  cursing  life, 
is  filled  with  hope;  he  is  an  optimist,  and 
wishes  to  get  well;  he  knows  that  he  will 
recover.  He  is  not  the  person  with  whom 
to  speak  of  the  infinite  vanity  of  all  things. 
It  would  rouse  his  fury  to  listen  to  the  con- 
demnation of  those  boons  that  are  momen- 
tarily out  of  his  reach  but  which  he  is 
preparing  to  seize  and  reconquer.  Scarron 
was  more  sickly  and  more  deformed  than 
Leopardi,  yet  he  was  none  the  less  a  gay, 
all  too  gay,  fellow.  As  for  not  being 
understood,  or  at  least,  not  being  received 
at  one's  proper  value, —  there  is  nothing 
in  that  to  make  a  healthy  mind  pessimistic. 
The  superior  man,  after  all,  scorns  the 
opinion  of  men  so  long  as  it  remains  only 

52 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

an  opinion, —  that  is  to  say,  a  matter 
without  practical  consequences.  And  this 
was  Leopardi's  situation,  for  he  could  have 
lived  in  independence  upon  his  scant,  but 
honorable  patrimony. 

Pessimism  is  related  to  character,  and 
character  is  an  expression  of  physiology. 
The  case  with  writers,  philosophers  and 
poets  is  exactly  the  same  as  with  men  of 
other  professions.  They  are  gay,  sad, 
witty,  morose,  avaricious,  liberal,  ardent, 
lazy,  and  their  talent  assumes  the  color  of 
their  character. 

If  one  were  to  make  a  study  of  literature 
from  this  point  of  view, —  a  procedure 
which  would  not  lack  interest, —  one  would 
very  probably  discover  a  great  number 
of  pessimists,  or,  as  they  were  called  for- 
merly, sad  spirits.  There  are  few  men  of 
worth  who  have  not  at  times  found  a  bitter 
taste  to  life,  even  among  those  who,  like 
M.  Renan,  professed  eternal  joviality. 
There  is  no  great  writer  without  great 
sensibility;   he  is  capable  of  keen  joys,  and 

53 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

of  excessive  pain  as  well.  Now  pain,  which 
is  depressive,  leaves  deeper  traces  in  life 
than  joy.  If  intelligence  does  not  rule,  if  it 
does  not  intervene  to  establish  a  hierarchy, 
or  an  equilibrium  of  sensations,  then  the 
sad  ideas  triumph  because  of  their  superior 
numbers  and  power.  Renan's  serenity  is 
perhaps  only  the  apathy  of  indifference; 
Goethe's  serenity  represents  the  victory  of 
intellect  over  sensibility. 

Pessimism  is  neither  a  religious  senti- 
ment nor  a  modern  one,  although  it  has 
often  assumed  religious  form  and  although 
the  most  celebrated  pessimists  belong  to 
the  nineteenth  century.  The  Greeks,  who 
knew  everything,  knew  the  despair  of 
living:  the  pessimism  of  Heraclitus  had 
preceded  the  optimism  of  Plato.  There 
are  few  pages  more  bitter  than  those  in 
which  the  naturalist  Pliny  summarizes  the 
miseries  of  human  life.  Nature  casts  man 
upon  the  earth;  of  all  animals  he  is  the 
only  one  destined  to  tears;  he  cries  from 
the    moment    of   birth    and    never    laughs 

54 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

before  his  fortieth  day.  And  after  having 
enumerated  all  the  evils  and  the  passions 
which  desolate  mankind,  Pliny  concludes 
by  approving  the  ancient  Greek  epigram: 
"It  is  best  not  to  be  born  or  to  die  as  soon 
as  possible." 

Leopardi  has  scarcely  done  more  than 
paraphrase  these  elementary  ideas,  but 
this  he  has  done  with  abundance  and 
ingeniousness.  So  funereal  is  his  spirit 
that  he  throws  a  veil  of  mourning  over  the 
most  charming  things:  "Enter  a  garden 
of  plants,  herbs  and  flowers,'*  he  says, 
"even  in  the  gentlest  season  of  the  year. 
You  cannot  turn  your  glance  in  any  direc- 
tion without  discovering  traces  of  misery. 
All  the  members  of  this  vegetable  family 
are  more  or  less  in  a  *  state  of  suffering.' 
There  a  rose  is  wounded  by  the  sun  that 
has  given  it  life;  it  shrivels,  blanches,  and 
withers  away.  Further  on,  behold  that 
lily,  whose  most  sensitive,  most  vital  parts 

are  being  sucked  by  a  bee This  tree  is 

infested  by  a  swarm  of  ants;    others,  by 

55 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

caterpillars,  flies,  snails,  mosquitoes;  one 
is  wounded  in  its  bark,  tortured  by  the 
sun,  which  penetrates  into  the  wound;  the 
other  is  attacked  in  the  trunk  or  in  its 
roots.  You  will  not  find  in  all  this  garden 
a  single  small  plant  whose  health  is  per- 
fect. . . .  Every  garden  is,  in  a  way,  nothing 
but  a  vast  hospital, —  a  place  even  more 
lamentable  than  a  cemetery, —  and  if  such 
beings  are  endowed  with  sensibility,  it  is 
certain  that  non-existence  would  to  them 
be  far  preferable  to  existence."  Leopardi 
here  commits  the  error  of  him  who  wishes 
to  prove  too  much.  His  pessimism  abdi- 
cates reason,  and  the  sentence  about  noth- 
ingness being  preferable  to  life,  which  in 
Pliny  was  beautiful  and  philosophic,  ac- 
quires in  the  Italian  philosopher  a  somewhat 
ridiculous  sentimentality. 

Jouffroy,  perhaps  with  this  page  in 
mind,  has  put  tender  souls  on  guard 
against  any  belief  in  the  sensibility  of 
plants:  let  us  leave  that  to  the  reveries  of 
Pythagorus, —  so  noble,  from  other  stand- 

56 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

points, —  or  to  the  fairy  tales,  whither  we 
may  go  of  an  evening  in  spring  to  pluck 
the  rose  that  speaks.  But  if  he  had  pos- 
sessed a  more  intimate  knowledge  of  nature, 
and  of  the  relations  between  insects  and 
plants,  what  a  picture  at  once  admirable 
and  cruel  would  not  Leopardi  have  been 
able  to  draw!  Those  mosquitoes,  upon 
whom  he  looks  as  allies  of  the  caterpillars 
in  ravaging  the  leaves  of  some  cherry-tree, 
are  ichneumons,  and  it  is  the  caterpillars 
themselves  that  they  have  come  to  attack, 
piercing  them  with  a  long,  hollow  borer 
which  permits  the  mosquito  to  lay  in  the 
very  flesh  of  the  caterpillar  eggs  which, 
when  they  become  larvae,  will  gnaw  the 
living  flesh  like  terrible  little  vultures. 

If  Leopardi  had  known  this  and  many 
another  thing, —  if  he  had  known  that 
every  living  creature  is  in  turn  prey  and 
depredator,  in  turn  eater  and  eaten,  he 
would  have  considered  with  even  greater 
bitterness  the  arrival  of  the  new  year, 
which  hastens  from  the  very  first  days  of 

57 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  .  IN  .  PARIS 

its  springtime,  to  impart  full  strength  and 
full  passion  to  the  instincts  of  life  and 
devastation. 

Leopardi  despairs:  he  is,  therefore,  a 
weakling.  His  humble  almanac-vendor  is 
made  of  better  clay.  He  hopes;  he  wishes 
to  live  and  live  happily;  he  possesses  at 
least  a  little  of  that  energy  without  which 
other  gifts  prove  only  too  often  to  be 
blemishes  and  burdens. 


58 


THE  INSURRECTION  OF  THE 
VERTEBRATES 


THE   INSURRECTION  OF   THE 
VERTEBRATES 

IT  is  well  known  how  the  spiritualists 
tried  to  capture  Pasteur,  because  his 
theories,  denying  spontaneous  gen- 
eration, seemed  to  them  his  consecration 
of  the  old  dogma  of  a  Creator.  Pasteur 
never  professed  such  ideas;  he  limited  him- 
self to  pursuing  brilliantly  his  profession  as 
a  scientist.  It  was  not  without  a  feeling  of 
sadness  that,  pestered  by  the  admiration 
of  a  too  pious  gentry,  he  wrote  to  Saint- 
Beuve,  I  believe:  "Let  us  continue  our 
labors,  without  giving  heed  to  the  philo- 
sophic or  religious  deductions  that  may  be 
drawn  from  them." 

Well,  here  is  that  same  gentry   trying, 
very    maladroitly    moreover,     to    turn    to 

61 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

their  profit  the  results  of  a  new  scientific 
theory  which  is  beginning  to  make  a  stir 
in  the  world, —  the  law  of  vital  constancy. 
M.  Dastre  expounded  it  the  other  day  at 
the  solemn  session  of  the  Institute  and 
demonstrated  its  supreme  importance.  If 
one  is  eager  to  keep  abreast  of  intellectual 
novelties,  one  should  possess  some  notion 
of  this  recent  scientific  theory;  just  as  one 
would  blush  not  to  possess  any  notion  of 
Darwin's  labors  and  the  theory  of  evolution, 
which  has  now  become  a  part  of  general 
culture. 

Man  is  the  product  of  an  evolution  the 
origin  of  which  is  contemporaneous  with 
the  very  origins  of  the  world.  He  has  as 
ancestors  not  only  men,  but  reckons  in  his 
genealogy  all  manner  of  animal  species. 
His  descent  from  the  monkey  through  the 
medium  of  a  semi-human  form  that  is  still 
little  known,  is  today  authenticated.  The 
monkey,  like  all  other  mammals  and  also 
the  marsupials  (kangaroo,  opossum)  is  a 
transformation   of  a   reptile;    the  reptiles, 

62 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

to  continue,  were  born  of  fishes,  who  are 
the  first  vertebrates  to  appear,  and  the 
fishes  in  turn  descend  from  the  annelides, 
humble  little  marine  animals.  But  let  us 
not  go  any  farther  back  than  the  fishes,  for,  in 
this  species  we  possess  a  certainty  that  may 
be  daily  demonstrated.  At  a  certain  stage 
of  its  development  the  human  embryo  has 
the  chief  characteristics  of  a  fish.  All  of 
us  were,  at  a  certain  moment  of  our  unborn 
life,  fishes;  this  is  as  certain  as  the  most 
easily  verified  scientific  fact.  From  this 
piece  of  evidence,  and  a  hundred  others, 
it  has  been  possible  to  draw  up  this  aphor- 
ism, which  unites  the  evolution  of  the 
individual  to  general  evolution:  "Every 
individual,  in  his  embryonic  development, 
goes  through  the  same  phases  through 
which  the  evolution  of  his  species  has  gone 
in  traversing  the  ages." 

This  monumental  discovery  of  the  trans- 
formation of  species  is,  as  we  know,  due 
almost  entirely  to  Darwin.  It  is  he  who 
propounded  and  demonstrated  the  principle 

63 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

of  evolution.  But  if,  in  his  so  abundant 
books,  he  explained  the  how,  he  did  not 
discover  the  why.  He  registered  facts, 
but  did  not  show  why  these  facts  should 
have  been  absolutely  necessary.  It  is  this 
gap  which  the  theories  of  M.  Quinton  now 
fill,  at  the  same  time  confirming  in  a  bril- 
liant manner  the  selfsame  principles  of 
Darwinism,  evolutionism  and  transform- 
ism.  Before  M.  Quinton,  one  might, 
strictly  speaking,  with  a  semblance  of 
good  faith,  contest  Darwin  s  conclusions: 
henceforth,  it  is  impossible:  the  facts  are 
interconnected;  we  know  their  necessary, 
implacable  cause.  Thanks  to  M.  Quinton, 
evolutionism  should  rather  be  termed  revo- 
lutionism. 

There  are  in  this  theory,  two  things  to 
consider:  life  itself,  and  the  environment 
amid  which  it  develops.  Life  is  a  fixed 
phenomenon.  It  began  in  a  marine  milieu, 
at  the  very  beginnings  of  the  world,  and  it 
tends  constantly  to  preserve,  through  all 
the  transformations  of  a  terrestrial  milieu, 

64 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

the  original  conditions  of  its  appearance. 
As  a  consequence,  the  most  highly  devel- 
oped animals,  the  superior  animals,  among 
which  man  takes  first  place,  are  those  which 
have  been  able  to  preserve  in  the  interior 
of  their  bodies,  in  the  form  of  blood,  a 
vital  milieu  almost  identical  with  the  origi- 
nal marine  milieu, —  the  environment  in 
which  life  was  born:  in  fact,  the  degree  of 
saltness  in  our  blood  represents  the  salt- 
ness  of  the  sea  at  the  moment  life  made 
its  appearance,  and,  moreover,  our  internal 
temperature  represents  the  mean  tempera- 
ture of  the  globe  at  the  moment  our  species 
was  born. 

The  terrestrial  milieu  is  unstable.  Its 
heat  has  constantly  diminished.  Formerly, 
in  the  most  remote  epochs,  the  vicinity  of 
the  poles,  now  an  ice-covered  and  inac- 
cessible extent,  had  a  climate  hotter  than 
that  of  the  tropics.  Life  was  born  amid 
this  tropical  environment,  at  the  bottom 
of  an  ocean  that  had  a  far  higher  tempera- 
ture than  the  Caribbean  sea  or  the  sea  of 

65 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

Java.  Nevertheless  the  poles  grew  colder 
and  all  the  other  parts  of  the  world  as  well. 
Then  animal  life  found  itself  faced  with 
this  alternative:  either  to  accept  the  new 
conditions  of  the  milieu,  or  to  rebel  against 
these  conditions, —  struggle  and  maintain 
internally  despite  the  external  temperature, 
the  high  temperature  of  its  origin. 

That  is  a  solemn  moment  in  the  drama 
of  the  world.  What  is  to  happen?  If  the 
new  conditions  are  accepted,  it  spells  fatal 
decline.  If  they  are  repulsed,  it  means  a 
magnificent  future  development.  Almost 
all  animal  life  submitted:  it  is  today  rep- 
resented by  the  lowest  class  of  living 
creatures:  the  invertebrates.  A  single 
representative  of  the  animal  world  re- 
volted, made  a  prodigious  effort,  entered 
into  strife  with  the  hostile  milieu  and  domi- 
nated it:  the  vertebrate.  Thus  life,  in  its 
superior  aspects,  affirmed  itself  from  the 
very  earliest  times  as  an  insurrection. 

M.  Quinton,  says:  "The  vertebrate 
stands    forth  as   marked    by  a    particular 

66 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  .  PARIS 

character,  which  distinguishes  him  from 
the  rest  of  the  animal  kingdom,  giving  him 
a  position  apart,  above.  While  the  balance 
of  the  animal  kingdom  accepts,  or  rather 
undergoes,  in  the  face  of  the  progressive 
shrinking  of  the  seas  and  the  cooling  of  the 
globe,  the  new  conditions  that  have  come 
about,  and  to  which  it  can  yield  only  at  the 
cost  of  intense  suffering,  the  vertebrates 
give  evidence  of  a  special  power;  they 
refuse  to  accept  the  conditions  and  con- 
fronted by  hostile  circumstances  main- 
tain the  sole  conditions  favorable  to  their 
existence ....  They  are  not,  then,  like  the 
invertebrates,  the  passive  toys  of  circum- 
stances that  dominate  them,  but,  in  part, 
the  masters  of  the  fundamental  conditions 
necessary  to  their  welfare.  In  the  midst 
of  the  physical  world  that  surrounds  him, 
ignores  him  and  oppresses  him,  man  is  not 
the  sole  insurgent^  the  only  animal  in  revolt 
against  the  natural  conditions,  the  only 
one  tending  to  found,  in  an  instable,  hostile 
medium,  the  fixed  elements  of  a  superior 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

life.     The  simple  fish,  the  simple  mammal 

hold    the    essential    physical    laws    in 

check.  When  man  attacks  the  natural 
forces  that  surround  him,  in  order  to 
dominate  the  hostile  elements  in  them,  he 
first  participates  of  the  genius  of  the 
vertebrate." 

I  have  purposely  underscored  the  words 
sole  insurgent.  These  words,  in  fact,  indi- 
cate the  orientation  of  our  efforts  the 
moment  we  attempt  to  apply  the  biological 
principles  enunciated  by  M.  Quinton  to  the 
social  domain.  Far  from  teaching  stagna- 
tion, resignation,  acceptation,  he  counsels 
on  the  contrary,  if  one  understands  him, 
revolt  against  all  that  bars  the  progress  of 
life  and  the  maintenance  of  its  highest 
conditions  of  power  and  intensity.  These 
ideas  are  related  to  the  basic  ideas  of 
Nietzsche's  philosophy:  we  must  grow  or 
succumb.  It  is  the  same  with  individuals 
and  persons  as  with  the  animal  species: 
those  who  accept  the  conditions  provided 
by    their    traditional    environment,    those 

68 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

who  do  not  react,  are  condemned  to  de- 
cadence: they  are  invertebrates.  The 
traits  of  a  superior  organism,  on  the  con- 
trary, are  reaction  through  deep,  con- 
tinued evolution,  or  by  a  brusk  revolution 
against  the  mediocrity  of  the  milieu  which 
tends  to  dominate  and  reduce  it. 

In  certain  places  it  is  freely  asserted  that 
the  peoples  of  the  future  are  the  wise 
peoples  slumbering  in  the  tradition  of  a 
political  order,  of  a  religious  order,  or  a 
moral  order:  those  peoples,  on  the  con- 
trary, are  in  their  decline.  But  there  is 
something  worse:  there  are  political  or 
social  groups  that  dream,  not  of  attaining 
to  the  genius  of  the  vertebrate,  which 
spells  perpetual  combat  against  the  hostility 
of  the  environment,  but  of  becoming  once 
again  invertebrates,  and  of  falling  asleep 
gently  in  the  lap  of  ancient  traditions. 

There  is,  according  to  the  theories  of  M. 
Quinton,  in  the  social  realm  as  in  the 
biological,  a  fixed  point,  and  one  that  must 
remain  fixed  unless  decline  is  to  set  in,  and 

69 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

that  is  life;  but  we  must  not  confuse  life 
with  the  environment  in  which  it  evolves. 
Life  is  constant  and  the  milieu  is  variable. 
The  most  diverse  political  and  social  insti- 
tutions have  been  successively  imagined 
by  man  to  assure,  according  to  the  needs 
of  the  moment,  the  development  of  his  life. 
And  as,  in  the  course  of  time,  they  have 
appeared  to  him  insufficient,  he  has  re- 
jected them  to  imagine  others  more  in 
confirmity  with  his  requirements:  and 
thus  social  progress  appears  as  a  necessity, 
in  the  same  way  that  anatomical  progress 
has  transformed  an  ocean  worm  into  a  fish 
and  the  fish  into  a  mammal  or  a  bird.  In 
the  two  cases  there  is  a  certain  end  sought. 
It  is  for  man  to  create  for  himself  the  social 
conditions  that  will  permit  his  life  to  main- 
tain its  loftiest  aims. 

When  the  social  conditions  that  the  old 
regime  brought  about  in  France  appeared 
to  men  unsuited  any  longer  to  the  mainte- 
nance of  their  life,  they  acted  like  good 
vertebrates, —  they    revolted.     Civilization 

70 


PHILOSOPHIC  ■  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

is  nothing  but  a  succession  of  insurrections, 
now  against  the  hostility  of  physical  forces, 
—  especially  against  the  cold, —  now  against 
social  forces,  which,  after  a  period  of  use- 
fulness, tend  almost  always  to  evolve  in  the 
direction  of  parasitism. 


7i 


THE  QUESTION  OF  FREE  WILL 


THE   QUESTION   OF   FREE   WILL 

THOSE  physicians  were  wise  who,  at 
a  recent  congress,  voted  to  refuse 
making  any  statement  upon  the 
problems  of  responsibility  propounded  to 
them  by  the  courts.  What  does  responsi- 
bility mean?  Where  does  it  begin?  What 
are  its  boundaries?  One  finds  himself  here 
not  in  the  presence  of  a  question  of  simple 
legal  medicine;  to  speak  of  responsibility 
is-  to  speak  of  free  will,  and  to  speak  of 
free  will  is  to  be  plunged  into  the  funda- 
mental mysteries  of  human  philosophy. 
These  mysteries,  to  tell  the  truth,  are 
mysteries  only  because  it  is  to  man's 
interest  that  things  should  be  so.  We 
are    accustomed    to    consider    human    acts 

75 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  .  PARIS 

as  free  acts,  voluntarily  consented  to;  the 
adoption  of  a  contrary  view  would  so  inter- 
fere with  our  habits  that  social  life  would 
become  exceedingly  difficult.  Our  teachers 
or  experience  have  taught  us  that  our  body 
is  capable  of  two  kinds  of  movement, —  the 
one  involuntary  and  necessary,  such  as  respi- 
ration, or  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  and 
the  other  voluntary,  accomplished  at  will, — 
the  movement  of  our  limbs,  our  tongue,  our 
lips.  But  a  closer  examination  would  soon 
show  us  that  this  division  is  very  arbitrary. 
It  is  impossible  for  us  to  make  our  heart 
stop  beating;  but  is  it  really  possible  to  stop 
our  finger  from  moving,  and  if  it  is,  for  how 
long?  We  can  cease  eating:  but  for  how 
long?  We  can  even  stop  breathing;  for 
how  long?  In  reality,  the  freedom  of  our 
bodily  movements,  if  it  exists,  is  a  limited 
freedom,  a  freedom  exercised  within  a  very 
narrow  circle, —  the  freedom  of  a  prisoner 
who  can  pace  back  and  forth  in  his  cell. 
Similarly,  the  exercise  of  our  external 
activity  is  subjected  to  rather  strict  condi- 

76 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  .  PARIS 

tions:  we  can  speak,  walk,  work  in  a 
thousand  different  ways,  but  during  a 
certain  time  only.  At  the  end  of  this 
time  we  feel  that  our  freedom  is  exhausted 
we  are  at  the  end  of  our  chain.  There 
is  nothing  more  to  do:  we  must  obey. 
In  whatever  direction  we  may  turn  we 
behold  looming  forth  the  obstacle  that 
will  certainly  bar  our  way.  Sometimes 
there  is  annexed  to  the  prison  a  little 
courtyard  where  we  may  walk  about  a 
little,  but  this  courtyard  is  itself  only  a 
prison:  the  boundary  has  been  set  back  a 
few  paces,  that  is  all. 

If  we  now  pass  to  the  examination  of  the 
most  delicate  organs  of  our  body, —  the 
brain  and  the  nervous  system, —  we  see 
that  the  motions  executed  within  these 
organs  are  likewise  limited  in  their  evolu- 
tions. I  employ  these  simple  terms  ex- 
pressly, that  I  may  be  better  understood. 
We  perceive  these  motions  in  the  form  of 
sensations  or  thoughts.  Are  we  free  to 
be  hot  or  cold,  to  be  hungry  or  thirsty? 

77 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  -  IN  •  PARIS 

Are  we  independent  of  the  ideas  that  come 
to  us,  the  images  that  are  formed  in  our 
mind,  that  is  to  say,  our  brain?  No,  most 
assuredly.  At  least,  then,  we  are  free  to  re- 
ceive them  or  reject  them,  to  show  them  the 
door  or  smilingly  invite  them  in?  Here  we 
reach  the  crux  of  the  question,  for  it  is  at  this 
point  that  the  will  intervenes.  What,  in- 
deed, is  the  will?  The  will  is  nothing  more 
than  the  realization,  effected  by  our  mind, 
that  of  two  motives  one  is  more  powerful 
than  the  other.  The  will  is  perhaps  the 
least  voluntary  and  the  least  free  element 
in  our  make-up.  Before  it  declares  itself, 
we  are  often  in  a  state  that  gives  us  the 
illusion  of  liberty.  We  are  still  in  ignorance 
as  to  whether  we  shall  go  to  right  or  to  left. 
These  moments  of  vacillation  are  some- 
times agreeable  and  sometimes  disagreeable. 
Most  often  they  pass  unperceived,  and  we 
find  ourselves  started  on  one  of  the  two 
paths,  totally  unawares.  Our  will  has 
acted  mechanically.  Our  mind  has  worked 
like  an  automatic  scale. 

78 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  .  IN  .  PARIS 

Whatever  we  do,  there  is  a  cause,  and 
this  cause  itself  depends  upon  another, 
and  so  on  to  infinity.  If  I  am  at  this 
moment  smoking  a  cigar,  it  is  because 
Christopher  Columbus  discovered  America. 
The  search  for  causes  leads  to  authentica- 
tions of  this  order.  But  our  acts  have 
only  a  single  direct  cause.  Several  in- 
fluences have  combined  and  weighed  upon 
the  lever.  Often,  when  we  reflect  upon 
the  motives  for  our  acts,  we  imagine  that 
we  have  found  them,  yet  the  most  impor- 
tant motive  has  escaped  us.  To  enter  into 
examples  of  this  would  be  to  enter  the 
absurd;  Pascal  has  given  one  which  has 
become  famous, —  his  epigram  about  Cleo- 
patra's nose.  It  is  saying  little  to  aver 
that  effects  and  causes  are  united  like  the 
links  of  a  chain.  I  see  effects  and  causes 
rather  in  the  guise  of  an  extremely  compli- 
cated fabric,  of  which  every  thread  depends 
upon  the  others.  But  such  a  representation 
may  not  be  made  materially.  Let  it  suffice 
for  us  to  understand  and  to  admit  that  none 

79 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

of  our  actions  is  the  beginning  of  a  series. 
There  is  only  a  single  series,  which  does 
not  seem  to  have  had  a  beginning  and  whose 
end  it  is  impossible  to  foresee. 

Notwithstanding,  we  have  the  sentiment 
of  liberty,  and  consequently,  of  responsi- 
bility. These  are  very  curious  illusions 
and  very  mysterious,  but  illusions  none  the 
less.  Among  those  of  which  our  life  is 
composed,  they  are  perhaps  the  most 
useful;  they  are  even  more, —  they  are 
necessary.  We  are  not  free,  yet  we  can- 
not act  except  by  believing  ourselves  free. 
If  for  a  moment  we  actually  ceased  to 
believe  in  free  will,  we  should  at  once  cease 
to  act  altogether.  In  his  book  on  Dupli- 
cisme  Humain^  M.  Camille  Sabatier  has 
written:  "Liberty  is  as  inexplicable  as 
it  is  certain."  It  is,  in  my  opinion,  the 
illusion  of  liberty  that  is  as  inexplicable 
as  it  is  certain,  and,  I  add,  necessary. 
Where  I  agree  fully  with  him  is  when  he 
asserts  that  the  matter  presents  "a  mys- 
tery of  our  nature."     He  has  attempted  a 

80 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

most  ingenious  explanation,  but  which,  I 
believe,  leaves  still  standing  the  determin- 
ist  objections,  of  which  I  have  summarized 
several  of  the  features.  It  is  the  eternal 
opposition  of  feeling  and,  not  reason  but 
reasoning.  But  it  matters  little  whether 
they  teach  and  adopt  one  or  the  other 
theory;  that  could  have  no  influence  upon 
the  conduct  of  men  or  upon  their  judg- 
ments. Nor  would  it  have  any  influence 
upon  our  manner  of  looking  upon  crime 
and  the  various  infractions  of  the  law  and 
moral  conventions.  If  men  are  free  and 
consequently  responsible,  there  need  be 
no  change  in  our  judicial  institutions.  If 
men  are  not  free,  if  they  are  irresponsible, 
there  need  still  be  no  change,  for  a  crime 
is  a  crime  just  the  same, —  always  an  anti- 
social act  against  the  repetition  of  which 
it  is  necessary  to  protect  ourselves.  It 
even  seems  that  the  determinists,  to  whom 
I  belong,  would  be  inclined  rather  to  a 
very  severe  repression.  A  philosophic  doc- 
trine is  not  necessarily   a  social  doctrine. 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

A  determinist,  doubtless,  could  not  admit 
the  idea  of  punishment,  but  he  will  readily 
admit  that  of  repression.  And  it  all  comes 
to  the  same  thing.  We  must  live.  Socie- 
ties have  no  choice.  But  it  is  easy  to 
understand  why  the  physicians,  who  are 
almost  all  determinists,  should  have  re- 
solved not  to  take  a  stand  upon  questions 
of  responsibility.  That  is  not  within  the 
province  of  medicine,  which  should  limit 
itself  to  declaring  whether  the  subject  is 
healthy  or  ill,  and  to  caring  for  him  if  he 
is  entrusted  into  its  hands. 

One  may,  moreover,  in  agreement  with 
Dr.  Grasset,  and  also  with  the  facts  and 
common  sense,  admit  that  there  are  men- 
tally sick  persons,  and  that  these  persons 
vary  as  to  the  degree  to  which  they  are 
affected,  that  is  to  say,  they  are  more  or 
less  conscious,  more  or  less  able  to  resist 
their  impulses.  The  hypothesis  of  deter- 
minism cannot  make  us  forget  all  the  visible 
shades  of  difference  between  the  normal 
individual  and  the  typical  madman.     The 

Q0 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

normal  man  receives  varied  impressions, 
external  and  internal;  some  impel  him  to 
action,  others  hold  him  back:  he  estab- 
lishes an  equilibrium.  Normal  life  is  noth- 
ing but  that, —  a  state  of  equilibrium,  a 
static  condition.  The  man  who  is  termed 
abnormal  is,  on  the  contrary,  more  or  less 
constantly  out  of  balance.  He  is  impelled 
by  one  force  that  is  not  counterbalanced 
by  another:  he  falls.  When  the  wind 
blows  always  from  the  same  direction  upon 
a  row  of  pines,  it  bends  them  all  in  the  same 
direction.  If  the  wind,  though  violent, 
blows  alternately  from  opposite  directions, 
the  trees  remain  erect.  These  rows  of 
pines  will  provide  us,  not  with  the  image, 
but  with  the  schema  of  the  normal  and  the 
abnormal  man.  Neither  one  nor  the  other, 
—  and  the  man  as  little  as  the  tree, —  is 
responsible  either  for  the  origin,  or  the 
power,  or  the  direction  of  the  wind  which 
bends  them  and  straightens  them  in  turn 
or,  on  the  contrary,  breaks  them  forever 
as  if  they  were  mere  reeds;    there  remains 

83 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

however,  the  fact,  that  while  the  one  kept 
itself  erect  in  a  healthy  posture,  despite 
occasionally  rude  shocks,  the  other,  sub- 
jected to  a  constant  pressure,  bent  over 
from  day  to  day  with  its  head  nearer  to  the 
ground,  or  even,  as  the  result  of  a  more 
than  usually  violent  tempest,  broke  alto- 
gether. 

It  is  a  fact,  and  one  must  keep  it  in  mind 
when  he  passes  judgment  upon  trees  or 
upon  men.  It  is  a  fact,  and  that  is  all. 
Nevertheless,  if  the  tree  has  been  uprooted 
by  a  violent  tempest,  there  is  nothing  left 
but  to  call  the  wood-cutters,  who  are  the 
judges  of  trees.  If  they  inquire  into  the 
cause  of  the  disaster,  it  will  be  through 
pure  curiosity;  their  business  does  not  lie 
there;  they  know  their  duty  and  will  per- 
form it. 

When  we  shall  have  exhausted  all  the 
arguments  for  and  against  all  the  degrees 
of  responsibility  that  may  be  discovered 
in  a  healthy  or  a  sick  person,  we  shall  find 
ourselves    in    agreement    with    the    social 

84 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

wood-cutters,  with  the  magistrates,  on 
the  necessity  of  removing  and  forever 
ridding  society  of  him.  Then,  having  once 
more  become  philosophers,  we  shall  try  to 
reach  agreement  upon  this  point:  that  it  is 
a  matter  not  of  administering  punishment 
but  of  preserving  ourselves;  our  interest 
should  be  centered  not  upon  the  author, 
but  the  purpose  of  the  crime.  Let  us  not 
even  speak  of  crime;  let  us  speak  of  danger. 
Ah!  How  simple  it  all  would  be,  or  at 
least  more  simple  than  at  present,  if  the 
notion  of  criminal  act  was  superseded  by 
that  of  dangerous  act.  The  idea  of  crime 
is  a  metaphysical  idea;  the  idea  of  danger 
is  a  social  idea.  The  opinions  of  MM. 
Baudin,  Faguet  and  de  Fleury,  which 
frighten  M.  Grasset,  are  in  principle  highly 
acceptable.  On  the  occasion  of  each  new 
crime  society  cannot  institute  a  new  philo- 
sophical debate  nor  set  about  resolving 
questions  which,  ever  since  there  have  been 
men  who  think,  have  troubled  human 
thought.     For  some   time   they   have   not 

85 


PHILOSOPHIC     NIGHTS     IN  •  PARIS 

been  asking  the  jury  for  their  opinion  upon 
the  materiality  of  a  fact;  they  subject 
them  to  an  examination  in  philosophy. 
It's  ridiculous. 

There  are  on  one  side  the  assassins  and 
on  the  other  the  assassinated.  What  differ- 
ence does  it  make  to  me  whether  the  fellow 
who'll  split  my  head  be  an  apache  or  a 
lunatic?  What  does  matter  to  me,  is  to 
live.  I  feel  intense  compassion  for  the 
sick,  but  I  am  very  anxious  that  persons 
suffering  with  madness  be  shut  in. 

All  men  are  ill,  said  Hippocrates.  We 
all  need  care;  so  I  see  nothing  wrong  about 
criminals  attracting  special  attention  from 
the  medical  corps.  There  are  so  many 
interesting  cases  among  them! 


86 


FOOTPRINTS  ON  THE  SAND 


FOOTPRINTS  ON  THE  SAND. 

Posterity  is  a  schoolboy  who  is  condemned 
to  learn  a  hundred  verses  by  heart.  He 
learns  ten  of  them  and  mumbles  a  few 
syllables  of  the  rest.  The  ten  are  glory;  the 
rest  is  literary  history. 

Traditions?  Of  course,  tradition.  But 
do  you  not  believe  that  there  is  a  begin- 
ning to  everything,  even  to  tradition? 

Anti-clericalism  works  for  the  benefit  of 
the  dissident  sect.  In  England,  religious 
radicalism  recruits  Catholics;  in  France  it 
recruits  Protestants. 

Man  can  no  more  see  the  world  than  a 
fish  can  see  the  river  bank. 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

Many  a  time  have  I  written  the  word 
"  beauty,"  but  almost  never  without  being 
conscious  of  writing  down  an  absurdity. 
There  are  beautiful  things,  but  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  Beauty:  that  is  an  abridged 
expression.  It  cannot  be  taken  in  an  abso- 
lute sense;  there  is  no  Absolute. 

Civilization  is  the  cultivation  of  every- 
thing that  Christianity  calls  vice 

For  two  thousand  years  Christianity, 
impudently  playing  with  the  meaning  of 
words,  has  been  telling  us:  Life  is  death, 
death  is  life.  It  is  time  to  consult  the  dic- 
tionary. 

Politics  depends  upon  statesmen  in  about 
the  same  measure  that  the  weather  depends 
upon  astronomers. 

There  are  two  courses  open  to  the 
prophet:  either  to  announce  a  future  in 
conformity  with  the  past, —  or  to  be  mis- 
taken. 

90 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

An  imbecile  is  never  bored:  he  contem- 
plates himself. 

Nothing  is  better  for  "spiritual  advance- 
ment" and  the  detachment  of  the  flesh 
than  a  close  reading  of  the  "Erotic  Dic- 
tionary." 

The  greater  part  of  men  who  speak  ill 
of  women  are  speaking  ill  of  a  certain  woman. 

The  man  of  genius  may  dwell  unknown, 
but  one  always  may  recognize  the  path  he 
has  followed  into  the  forest.  It  was  a  giant 
who  passed  that  way.  The  branches  are 
broken  at  a  height  that  other  men  cannot 
reach. 

Werther  possesses  great  interest  because 
Goethe  afterward  wrote  Faust,  Wilhelm 
Meister,  and  so  many  other  works,  all  differ- 
ent. The  Werther  of  those  who  revamp 
their  first  book  fifteen  or  thirty  times  loses 
with  each  new  work  a  little  of  its  initial 

91 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

worth;  after  the  third  book  it  is  worth 
almost  nothing.  At  first,  however,  one 
cannot  tell  whether  that  Werther  is  the 
product  of  a  brain  or  of  a  mould;  that  is 
why  the  first  book  is  sacred. 

An  unnamable  critic  notes  some  of  the 
flaming  errors  of  Verhaeren, —  a  few  "  among 
a  hundred  others."  It  is  thither,  toward 
the  error,  toward  the  stain,  toward  the 
wound,  that  the  mediocre  spirit,  like  the  fly, 
wings  its  way  unerringly.  He  looks  at 
neither  the  eyes,  the  hair,  the  hands,  the 
throat,  nor  all  the  grace  of  the  woman  pass- 
ing by;  he  sees  only  the  mud  with  which 
some  churl  has  bespattered  her  gown;  he 
rejoices  at  the  sight;  he  would  like  to  see 
the  spot  grow  and  devour  both  the  gown 
and  the  flesh  of  its  wearer;  he  would  have 
everything  as  ugly,  as  dirty  and  despicable 
as  himself. 

Dialogue. —  GOD:  Who  has  made  you 
man?     MAN:  Who  has  made  you  God? 

92 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

Religions  turn  madly  about  sexual  ques- 
tions. 

The  world  will  never  forgive  the  Jews  for 
having  disdained  the  religion  which  they 
gave  to  the  world.  There  is  in  this  a  sort  of 
intellectual  treason  which  reminds  one  of 
those  merchants  who  do  not  wear,  or  eat,  or 
drink  their  own  merchandise. 

When  one  comes  to  define  the  philosophy 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  one  will  discover 
that  it  was  only  theology. 

An  opinion  is  shocking  only  when  it  is  a 
conviction. 

Nothing  so  imparts  the  satisfaction  of 
having  accomplished  one's  duty  as  a  good 
night's  sleep,  an  excellent  meal,  a  beautiful 
moment  of  love. 

What  is  life?  A  series  of  sensations. 
What    is    a    sensation?     A    remembrance. 

93 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

One   does  n't   live.     One   has   lived.     Life, 
said  an  old  man,  is  a  regret. 

The  terrible  thing  about  the  quest  for 
truth  is  that  you  find  it. 

There  are  things  which  one  must  have  the 
courage  not  to  write. 

As  to  possessing  the  truth:  I  think  of 
those  explorers  who  have  with  them  a  tame 
lion,  and  who  sleep  with  one  eye  open. 

Those  men  who  live  with  the  greatest 
intensity  are  often  the  ones  who  seem  to 
take  least  interest  in  life. 

To  have  a  solid  foundation  of  skepticism, 
—  that  is  to  say,  the  faculty  of  changing  at 
any  moment,  of  turning  back,  of  facing  suc- 
cessively the  metamorphoses  of  life. 

Learning  for  learning's  sake  is  perhaps  as 
coarse  as  eating  for  eating's  sake. 

94 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

It  is  a  singular  thing:  in  literature,  when 
the  form  is  not  new,  neither  is  the  content. 

Man  is  an  animal  that  "arrived";  that 
is  all. 

It  was  an  accident  that  endowed  man  with 
intelligence.  He  has  made  use  of  it:  he 
invented  stupidity. 

Sexual  modesty  is  an  advance  over  the 
exhibitionism  of  monkeys. 

Modesty  is  the  delicate  form  of  hypocrisy. 

Nothing  so  softens  the  obduracy  of  chaste 
hearts  as  the  certainty  of  secrecy. 

The  notion  that  the  dead  are  not  dead 
assumes,  in  the  crowd,  comical  forms.  I 
read  in  a  novel  (1901):  "Madeleine  read  the 
letter  over  again.  M.  Piot  was  dead,  the 
poor  man!  How  cold  he  must  be  in  that 
north  wind!"     Men  are  stupid. 

95 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  .  PARIS 

You  have  doubts?  About  what?  About 
whom?  About  God?  Why,  that's  a  very 
simple  matter:  write  to  him. —  I  haven't  his 
address. —  Such,  in  fact,  is  the  state  of  the 
question. 

Revolutionary  socialists  make  me  think 
of  the  fellow  who,  having  a  piano  that  was 
out  of  tune,  would  say:  "Let's  smash  this 
piano  and  throw  the  pieces  into  the  fire;  in 
its  place  we'll  install  an  Aeolian  harp." 

Christianity  has  already  won  three  great 
victories:  Constantine,  the  Reform,  the 
Revolution.  A  fourth  is  being  awaited, 
Collectivism,  after  which  it  is  probable  that 
the  Strong,  wearied  at  last  of  being  bullied, 
will  revolt  against  the  Weak  and  reduce 
them  to  slavery  —  once  again. 

Property  is  necessary;  but  it  is  not  neces- 
sary that  it  should  forever  remain  in  the 
same  hands. 

To  ameliorate  and  raise  the  standard  of 
the  workingmen  to  the  bourgeois  level,  is 

96 


PHILOSOPHIC  ■  NIGHTS  .  IN  •  PARIS 

perhaps  to  create  a  race  of  slaves  content 
with  their  lot, —  a  cast  of  comfortable 
Pariahs. 

Thought  harms  the  loins.  One  cannot 
at  the  same  time  carry  burdens  and  ideas. 

Said  Sixtus:  "Believe  in  nothing,  not 
even  the  trade  you  follow,  not  even  the  hand 
you  caress,  the  eyes  in  which  you  are 
mirrored,  not  even  yourself, —  above  all, 
not  in  yourself." 

The  true  philosopher  does  not  desire  to 
see  his  ideas  applied.  He  knows  that  they 
would  be  ill  carried  out,  deformed,  vulgar- 
ized. If  need  be,  he  would  actually  oppose 
such  a  course:  this  has  happened. 

Modesty  is  a  timid  confession  of  pride. 

The  ill  are  always  optimistic.  Perhaps 
optimism  itself  is  an  illness. 

There  is  a  simulation  of  intelligence,  just 
as  there  is  a  simulation  of  virtue. 

97 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

Mr.  X  used  to  say:  "Some  people  need  a 
great  deal  in  order  to  retain  a  little;  as  for 
me,  I  need  a  little  to  retain  a  great  deal." 

Science  is  worth  what  the  scientist  is 
worth. 

Scholars  spread  the  rumor  that  science  is 
impersonal.  Scholars?  They  are  scholars 
as  much  as  the  masons  are  architects. 

The  people  may  make  uprisings;  but 
revolutions,  never.  Revolutions  always 
come  from  above. 

Descartes  wrote  to  Balzac:  "Every  day 
I  walk  amidst  an  immense  people,  almost  as 
tranquilly  as  you  may  walk  in  your  lanes. 
The  men  I  meet  produce  upon  me  the  same 
impression  as  if  I  were  gazing  upon  the  trees 
of  your  forests  or  the  flocks  of  your  country- 
side." All  the  weakness  of  the  metaphysi- 
cians is  explained  by  these  two  scornful 
sentences.     In  order  to  understand  life  it  is 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

not  only  necessary  not  to  be  indifferent  to 
men,  but  not  to  be  indifferent  to  flocks,  to 
trees.     One  should  be  indifferent  to  nothing. 

The  superstition  which,  among  the  an- 
cients, caused  them  to  look  upon  new-born 
weaklings,  lame,  blind  and  hunchbacked 
infants,  as  tokens  of  divine  anger,  and  to 
sacrifice  them,  was  happier  than  the  reli- 
gious or  scientific  sentimentality  that  toler- 
ates them,  brings  them  up,  making  of  them 
half-men  and  introducing  eternal  germs  of 
decrepitude  among  the  race. 

Pity  is  perhaps  at  bottom  only  cowardice. 
We  pity  only  ourselves  or  those  whom  we 
fear. 

Nietzsche  stupefies.  Why?  Calm  reflec- 
tion will  show  that  he  almost  always  ex- 
presses common-sense  truths. 

Nietzsche  was  a  revealer,  in  the  new 
photographic  sense.     Contact  with  his  work 

99 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

has  brought  to  light  truths  that  were  slum- 
bering in  men's  minds. 

Happiness,  like  wealth,  has  its  parasites. 

One  does  not  dwell  in  a  house;  one  dwells 
in  himself. 

Put  a  pig  in  a  palace  and  he'll  make  a  pen 
of  it. 

Paul  Bourget  still  believes  in  duchesses. 
What  is  there  astonishing  about  that? 
There  are  many  people  who  believe  in 
ghosts. 

The  crowd  has  no  idea  of  how  much  sensi- 
bility and  intelligence  it  requires  to  enjoy 
the  perfume  of  a  rose  or  the  smile  of  a 
woman. 

Sainte-Beuve  is  too  scholarly.  He  cannot 
stand  nude  before  a  nude  statue;  he  has  to 
have  pockets  from  which  to  take  out  note- 
books and  papers. 

ioo 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

A  woman  sometimes  feels  pity  for  the 
sorrows  that  she  causes  remorselessly. 

The  little  girl  expects  no  declaration  of 
tenderness  from  her  doll.  She  loves  it,  and 
that's  all.     It  is  thus  that  we  should  love. 

The  craze  for  decorations  has  reached  such 
a  height  that  actors,  they  say,  are  proud  to 
play  the  role  of  an  Officer  of  the  Legion  of 
Honor. 

I'm  very  fond  of  going  to  the  butcher 
shop  and  looking  at  a  sheep's  brains.  We 
have  in  our  heads  a  reddish  sponge  of  the 
same  kind,  which  thinks. 

Love  disposes  one  to  religiosity.  I  knew 
an  atheist  who  wished  to  go  to  church  one 
evening  to  exchange  vows  with  his  mistress; 
through  scruples,  she  refused. 

Intelligence  is  perhaps  but  a  malady, —  a 
beautiful  malady;    the  oyster's  pearl. 

IOI 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

There  are  anti-clericals  who  are  in  reality 
somewhat  excessive  Christians. 

Is  not  the  poet  who  recites  his  verse 
before  an  audience  really  the  nightingale 
singing  his  song?  Not  quite.  The  instinct 
has  gone  astray:  sexual  mimicry,  without 
actual  application.  The  useful  has  become 
a  game:  and  this  is  the  whole  history  of 
civilization. 

"How  many  contradictions!" 
"Eh!  If  I  loaded  my  wagon  all  on  the 
same  side,  I'd  tumble  it  over." 

Persons  full  of  morality  preach.  Every- 
thing that  they  judge  criminal  I  either  prac- 
tise   or    think.     And    nevertheless.... 

Love  ye  one  another.  How  do  that, 
without  knowing  one  another?  No,  no; 
a  little  modesty,  a  little  dignity. 

It  is  shameful  to  be  ashamed  of  one's 
pleasures. 

1 02 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  -  PARIS 

To  be  above  everything.  To  scorn  every- 
thing and  love  everything.  To  know  that 
there  is  nothing,  and  that  this  nothing,  none 
the  less,  contains  everything. 

In  order  to  be  true,  a  novel  must  be  false. 

To  be  impersonal  is  to  be  personal  in  a 
particular  manner:  for  instance,  Flaubert. 
In  the  literary  jargon  one  would  say:  the 
objective  is  one  of  the  forms  of  the  sub- 
jective. 

Proudhon  said:  "After  the  persecutors, 
I  know  nothing  more  hateful  than  the 
martyrs."  Not  having  thought  of  this 
myself,  I  feel  pleasure  in  copying  it. 

To  be  seen.  The  man  of  letters  loves  not 
only  to  be  read  but  to  be  seen.  Happy  to 
be  by  himself,  he  would  be  happier  still  if 
people  knew  that  he  was  happy  to  be  by 
himself,  working  in  solitude  at  night  under 
his  lamp;   and  he  would  be  indeed  happiest 

103 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

of  all  if,  after  he  has  closed  his  door,  his 
servant  should  open  it  for  a  visitor  and  show 
to  the  importunate  fellow,  through  the 
chink,  the  man  of  letters  happy  to  be  by 
himself. 

Man  begins  by  loving  love  and  ends  by 
loving  a  woman. 

Woman  begins  by  loving  a  man  and  ends 
by  loving  love. 

Said  a  country  vicar  to  a  fanatically 
scrupulous  devotee:  "God  is  not  so  silly  as 
that." 

He  has  known  Claude  Bernard,  Flaubert, 
Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  Goncourt,  Manet,  Vil- 
liers  de  lTsle-Adam,  Renan,  Taine,  Pasteur, 
Verlaine,  Tarde,  Mallarme,  Puvis  de  Cha- 
vannes,  Marey,  Gauguin,  Curie,  Berthelot; 
he  knows  Rodin,  Ribot,  Renoir,  France, 
Quinton,  Monet,  Poincare, —  and  he  com- 
plains !  He  bewails  his  country's  decadence : 
The  ingrate! 

104 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

Nietzsche  opened  the  gate.  Now  one 
may  walk  straight  into  the  orchard  of  which, 
before  him,  it  was  necessary  to  scale  the 
walls. 

I  am  vexed  that  people  should  have 
thought  so  many  things  before  me.  I  seem 
like  a  reflection.  But  perhaps  some  day 
I'll  cause  another  man  to  repeat  the  same 
thing. 

I  do  not  vouch  for  the  fact  that  none  of 
these  observations  may  be  found  in  my 
previous  writings,  or  that  none  will  figure 
in  any  future  work.  They  may  even  be 
found  in  writings  that  are  not  mine. 


105 


THE  ART  OF  SEEING 


THE  ART  OF  SEEING 

Mon  voyage  depeint 
Vous  sera  d'un  plaisir  extreme. 
Je  dirai:   J'etais  la;    telle  chose  m'advint: 
Vous  y  croirez  etre  vous-meme. 

(The  tale  of  my  travels  will  be  extremely  pleasant  to  you. 
I'll  say.  "I  was  there;  such  and  such  things  happened  to  me." 
You'll  imagine  that  you're  there  yourself.) 

"ALAS!"  the  loving  dove  would  have 
r-\  replied,  if  he  had  taken  courses 
under  M.  Claparede,  professor 
of  psychology  at  the  University  of  Geneva. 
"Alas!  What  faith  may  I  have  in  your 
testimony?  You  will  tell  me  what  will 
take  place  in  your  head  and  Til  not  have 
the  consolation,  as  a  reward  for  your 
absence,  of  knowing  your  real  adven- 
tures ! "  But  this  was  not  what  La  Fontaine 
had  in  mind.  In  his  day  they  believed 
in  the  value  of  testimony  offered  in  good 
faith.  An  eye-witness  inspired  full  con- 
fidence.    People   bowed   with    mute   defer- 

109 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  .  PARIS 

ence  before  the  honest  man  who  said: 
"I  was  there;  such  and  such  things  hap- 
pened to  me."  And  the  custom  continues. 
Nevertheless,  in  certain  places,  they  are 
beginning  to  show  a  little  less  confidence. 
They  have  been  observing  and  reflecting 
and  have  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that 
the  majority  of  men  report  far  less  what 
they  have  seen  than  what  they  believed  they 
saw.  They  repeat  much  less  what  they 
heard  than  what  they  believed  they  heard. 
A  dozen  persons  having  witnessed  an  acci- 
dent will  present  a  dozen  different  ac- 
counts, or,  at  least,  accounts  that  do  not 
harmonize  exactly.  Still  better,  among  the 
dozen  there  will  be  one,  perhaps,  who  will 
have  seen  nothing,  and  another  who  will 
have  seen  the  contrary  to  what  his  com- 
panions saw. 

I  have  made  many  observations  in  regard 
to  this  subject.  One  of  these  observations 
is  that,  if  by  accident  I  have  had  direct 
and  exact  knowledge  of  an  event  reported 
by  a  newspaper,  the  newspaper  report  will 

no 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

very  often  be  in  contradiction  to  the  facts 
personally  known  to  me.  Another  observa- 
tion is,  that  every  time  I  have  read  the 
description  of  a  place  that  is  familiar  to  me, 
the  description,  in  almost  every  case,  has 
seemed  to  me  inexact,  incomplete, —  in 
short,  false.  Huysmans  was  a  meticulous 
observer;  more  than  any  one  else  he 
possessed  the  gift  of  seeing  things  well; 
his  sharp  eye  pierced  and  bored  into  men 
and  things.  More,  he  had  a  passion  for 
exactness,  and  he  would  scour  all  Paris  to 
verify  the  color  of  a  door  or  the  height  of  a 
house.  He  would  have  considered  it  a 
sort  of  literary  crime  to  describe  anything 
he  had  not  seen  with  his  own  eyes.  Well! 
This  man  with  the  miraculous  eye  said  to 
me  one  day,  speaking  of  the  Bievre,  a 
little  stream  which  at  that  time  still  flowed 
in  the  open,  between  the  fortifications  and 
the  Botanical  Garden:  "There  is  where 
you  may  see  the  last  poplars  of  Paris." 
This  old  Parisian,  who  loved  the  banks  of 
the  Seine,  had  never  beheld  its  poplars, 
in 


PHILOSOPHIC     NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

some  of  which  are  truly  wonderful,  as  at 
the  Pont  Royal, —  the  poplars  which  grow 
almost  along  its  entire  distance.  A  year 
ago,  a  group  of  us,  all  serious-minded 
gentlemen  of  Paris  and  of  the  quartier, 
were  discussing  the  number  of  arches  that 
comprise  the  bridge  of  Saints-Peres.  One 
may  walk  every  day  across  a  bridge  without 
knowing  the  number  of  its  arches,  but  one 
of  us  who  confessed  that  he  had  looked  at 
this  bridge  from  the  barge  or  from  the  quay 
perhaps  a  thousand  times  in  his  life,  was 
unable  to  settle  the  matter  for  us.  I  knew 
a  librarian  who  was  exceedingly  fond  of  the 
Memoirs  of  Casanova  and  who  mangled 
his  name,  calling  him  always,  and  emphati- 
cally, Casanova  de  Seignalt  instead  of 
Seingalt,  which  is  the  right  form.  I  have 
been  conducting  regularly,  in  the  same  re- 
view, for  some  twelve  years,  a  chronicle  un- 
der the  title  Epilogues;  one  of  my  friends, 
a  fellow  staff-member  of  the  same  review, 
has  said  or  written  to  me  at  least  ten 
times:  "I  have  read  your  latest  Episodes " 

112 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

This  reminds  me  of  the  English  historian 
Froude,  with  whom  Dr.  Gustav  LeBon 
recently  entertained  us,  dealing  with  this 
very  question  of  testimony.  Froude  pos- 
sessed a  genius  for  seeing  things  exactly 
opposite  to  what  they  really  were.  A 
curious  example  of  this  is  given;  it  con- 
cerns the  description  he  gives  of  the  town 
of  Adelaide,  Australia.  "I  saw  at  our 
feet,"  he  said,  "in  the  plain  cut  by  a  stream, 
a  city  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
inhabitants,  of  which  not  one  has  ever 
known  or  ever  will  know,  the  least  un- 
certainty upon  the  matter  of  the  regular 
return  of  his  three  meals  per  day."  Now, 
Adelaide  is  built  upon  a  height,  and,  at  the 
time  Froude  visited  it,  its  population,  half 
as  numerous  as  he  said  it  was,  was  a  prey 
to  a  terrible  famine.  And  this  is  the 
testimony  of  a  grave  personage,  with  a 
European  reputation, —  one  of  the  English 
historians  most  esteemed  by  those  who  have 
not  read  him. 

"If  Froude  had  lived  several   centuries 

m 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

earlier,"  adds  M.  Le  Bon,  "all  his  affirma- 
tions would  have  been  held  as  precious 
documents,  since  they  came  from  an  eye- 
witness whose  good  faith  there  was  no 
reason  for  suspecting.  How  many  very 
serious  histories  are  written  with  details  as 
little  trustworthy  as  this!" 

Jules  Simon  was  astounded  "that  so 
many  honest  persons  contradict  each  other 
when  giving  accounts  of  events  that  they 
have  witnessed.  At  every  step  I  encounter 
this  frightful  spectacle.  Man  is  least  sure 
of  his  own  spirit.  He  is  not  sure  of  his 
eyes:  the  fact  is  that  his  eyes  and  his 
memory  are  in  strife  with  his  imagination. 
He  believes  that  he  is  seeing;  he  believes 
that  he  is  remembering,  and  he  is  really 
inventing." 

This  is  what  explains  those  ancient  and 
modern,  and  even  contemporary  tales  of 
miracles,  apparitions  and  wonderful  hap- 
penings that  are  often  attested  by  a  large 
number  of  witnesses.  The  number  of  wit- 
nesses   signifies    nothing,    nor    does    their 

u4 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

honesty  or  their  good  faith.  On  the  con- 
trary, good  faith,  in  the  matter  of  testi- 
mony, is  an  element  to  be  on  guard  against. 
It  is  far  better  to  deal  with  bad  faith, 
which  betrays  itself  always  by  some 
blunder.  Saint  Paul  attests  that  Christ 
resurrected  was  beheld  by  more  than  five 
hundred  persons;  well,  it  is  a  matter  of 
doubt  now  as  to  whether  there  ever  existed 
a  person  named  Jesus  and  surnamed  the 
Christ.  Thousands  upon  thousands  of  per- 
sons in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  even  later, 
saw  the  Devil,  and,  adds  M.  Le  Bon,  if 
unanimous  testimony  may  be  considered 
as  proving  anything,  one  might  say  that 
the  Devil  is  the  personage  whose  existence 
has  been  best  demonstrated.  Gregory  of 
Tours,  an  historian  of  evident  good  faith, 
was  present  during  his  life  at  hundreds  of 
miracles,  which  he  describes  most  com- 
plaisantly.  He  saw  them,  controlled  them: 
yet  the  majority  of  them  are  pure  extrava- 
gances, inadmissible  in  our  day  even  by 
the  most  obtuse  of  pietists.     Contemporary 

115 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

history  and  Judicial  reports  prove  to  us 
constantly  the  worthlessness  of  evidence. 
At  the  time  of  the  Liban  catastrophe,  when 
the  vessel  went  down  in  broad  daylight  as 
the  result  of  a  collision,  it  was  impossible 
to  learn  from  the  surviving  members  of  the 
crew  whether  the  captain  was  or  was  not 
on  the  bridge  at  the  time  of  the  accident. 
Some  had  seen  him  there,  while  others 
swore  that  he  was  not  on  the  bridge.  In 
a  certain  criminal  trial  it  becomes  neces- 
sary to  identify  a  person  who  has  been  but 
glimpsed;  they  succeed  in  identifying  him, 
but  only  by  influencing  the  witnesses, 
placing  them  on  the  possible  track  or  upon 
that  which  justice  desires  them  to  follow. 
According  to  M.  Claparede's  experiments, 
a  person  of  whom  only  a  glimpse  has  been 
got,  if  the  witnesses  are  not  influenced,  is 
hardly  recognized  by  one  person  in  four, 
and  at  that  hesitantly. 

Really  good  observers  are  very  rare. 
Napoleon  pretended  to  recall  every  face 
he  had  looked  upon  once.     This  has  be- 

116 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

come  legendary,  but  it  is  not  quite  so. 
He  confused  all  the  names.  One  day,  he 
sees  a  certain  face  in  a  deputation  and 
thinks  that  he  recognizes  it.  It  was  a 
scholar  who  was  well  known  in  that  day, 
named  Ameilhon.  The  following  dialogue 
takes  place:  "Aren't  you  Ancillon?" — 
"Yes,  sire,  Ameilhon." — "Librarian  of 
Sainte-Genevieve?" — "Yes,  sire,  of  the 
Arsenal." — "Continuator  of  the  History 
of  the  Ottoman  Empire?" — "Yes,  sire, 
of  the  History  of  the  Low  Empire."  After 
which  Ameilhon,  enchanted  with  the  honor, 
went  off,  declaring  everywhere  most  em- 
phatically: "The  emperor  is  amazing. 
He  knows  everything."  And  we,  in  our 
turn,  might  say:  men  are  amazing;  they 
imagine  that  it  is  enough  to  have  wit- 
nessed an  event  to  be  sure  of  that  event! 
The  matter  is  far  more  complicated.  Cer- 
tainty is  difficult  to  acquire. 

Nothing  is  more  difficult  than  that 
which  is  too  easy.  Nobody  would  imagine 
that    he    could    play    the    violin    without 

117 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

having  learned  how;  and  if  he  did,  the 
least  attempt  would  at  once  extinguish 
his  pretense.  But  to  see?  What  more 
simple  than  that?  All  one  has  to  do  is 
open  one's  eyes.  "I  saw  it,"  is  the  reply 
of  a  witness  whose  story  is  contested; 
"Do  you  take  me  for  a  fellow  suffering 
from  hallucination?"  Precisely,  or  else 
for  a  purblind  person,  as  the  case  may  be. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  when  it  comes  to  see- 
ing, men  display  two  tendencies:  they 
see  what  they  wish  to  see,  what  is  useful 
to  them,  what  is  agreeable.  The  second 
is  the  tendency  toward  inhibition;  they 
do  not  see  what  they  do  not  wish  to  see, 
what  is  useless  to  them,  or  disagreeable. 

The  great  rule  by  which  almost  every- 
thing may  be  explained,  is  the  rule  of 
utility.  Certain  artisans  were  visiting  the 
Universal  Exposition.  They  looked  about, 
walked  along,  and  had  seen  nothing. 
Farther  on  they  continued  to  look  about, 
and  this  time  they  stopped;  they  had 
caught  sight  of  a  machine  that  could  be  of 

118 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

use  to  them  in  their  particular  work. 
We  do  not  see  that  to  which  we  are  indif- 
ferent. The  image  glides  by,  fades  and 
dies  out  before  having  had  time  to  become 
fixed,  and  we  make  no  effort  to  retain  it. 

I  knew  a  colonial  functionary  who  had 
travelled  around  the  globe,  and  who  spent 
years  in  our  various  colonies  in  Africa, 
Asia  and  America.  Once  in  a  while  I  am 
tempted  to  question  him.  But  he  is  at  a 
loss  for  reply.  Occupied  only  with  his 
advancement  and  with  his  family  affairs, 
he  really  saw  nothing.  Of  Singapore,  the 
strange  city  whence  a  young  writer,  M. 
Cassel,  has  brought  us  such  dazzling, 
magic  impressions,  this  fine  fellow  said  to 
me:  "Pretty  place;  a  few  houses  in  the 
European  style."  I  have  asked  many  a 
question  in  my  life,  but  never  have  I  re- 
ceived so  stupid  an  answer.  But  I  under- 
stand that  questions  are  always  indiscreet. 
To  ask  anybody  what  he  has  seen  is  to 
subject  him  to  torture.  He  sinks  a  fishing- 
line     into     his     memory     and    brings    up 

119 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

nothing.  Then  he  tries  to  invent,  and  the 
result  is  wretched.  Hence,  for  tourists, 
the  great  usefulness  of  the  guide-books. 
Without  these  books  they  would  have  seen 
nothing,  and  without  them  they  would 
recall  nothing.  "What  did  I  see  at 
Rome?  They  open  to  the  marked  page. 
"Rome,  Rome?"  said  a  hosier  whom  his 
wife  had  dragged  off  to  Italy.  "Ah!  I 
remember!  That's  the  place  where  I  pur- 
chased this  miserable  flannel  waistcoat." 
In  company  of  those  who  see  nothing 
or  almost  nothing  are  those  who  see 
crooked  or  inversely  altogether, —  those 
who  allow  themselves  to  be  guided  far 
less  by  their  eyes  than  by  their  sensibility, 
who  believe  that  a  thing  exists  because  it 
seems  to  them  that  they  have  received 
such  an  impression.  Whoever  has  a  de- 
partment under  him,  said  a  telegraph 
inspector,  has  been  able  to  prove  how 
inexact  the  reports  he  receives  often  are, 
and  how  necessary  it  is  to  verify  the  asser- 
tions of  agents  as  to  events  in  which  they 
1 20 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  .  IN  •  PARIS 

have  been  actors  or  spectators.  The  ac- 
count of  an  event  that  has  just  taken  place 
is  founded  upon  the  impressions  received 
rather  than  upon  direct  observation.  At 
the  end  of  several  days  the  imagination 
has  come  into  play  and  it  adds  the  finish- 
ing touch  to  the  crystallization  of  one's 
conviction.  At  this  moment,  if  there  was 
an  initial  error,  it  has  become  ineradicable. 
This  explains  all  those  disputes  between  the 
public  and  administrative  agents.  Each 
one  is  actuated  by  good  faith,  but  each 
has  beheld  the  event  in  a  different  light, — 
that  of  his  own  particular  interest, —  the 
one  intent  upon  upholding  respect  for  law 
or  rule,  the  other  eager  only  to  violate 
it  or  circumvent  it.  If  the  case  is  taken 
to  court,  the  judge,  whose  authoritarian 
tendency  is  very  marked,  almost  always 
finds  the  agent  of  the  law  in  the  right.  It 
is  nevertheless  quite  certain  that  the  agent 
is  not  to  be  believed  more  than  once  out 
of  two  times  on  the  average.  Even  this 
proportion  is  perhaps  highly  exaggerated. 

121 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

It  so  happens  that  according  to  special 
plans  there  is,  at  the  University  of  Geneva, 
a  large  window  opening  upon  an  interior 
corridor,  which  is  to  the  left  as  the  students 
enter  opposite  the  janitor's  lodge.  One 
day,  M.  Claparede  questioned  fifty-four 
students  as  to  the  existence  of  this  window, 
which  they  passed  by  every  day.  Do  you 
know  how  many  asserted  categorically 
that  the  window  did  not  exist?  Forty- 
four!  Astounded,  M.  Claparede  declares 
that  such  a  collective  testimony  is  discon- 
certing and  discouraging.  And  who  would 
not  agree  with  him?  Who  does  not  think 
with  horror,  after  this  experiment,  of  all 
those  criminal  trials  where  a  verdict  is 
rendered  on  the  strength  of  witnesses' 
testimony?  M.  Claparede  comes  to  the 
conclusion  that  a  single  witness  may  be 
right  despite  many  opposing  witnesses 
whose  stories  agree.  Unanimity  itself 
should  be  severely  controlled,  and  he 
adds,  quite  in  accord  with  my  own  notions 
upon    the    matter:     "One    is    led    to    ask 

122 


PHILOSOPHIC  ■  NIGHTS  •  IN     PARIS 

whether  it  is  not  the  rule  to  disregard 
those  objects  about  us  which  are  without 
interest  to  us,  and  if  it  is  not  only  by 
accident,  and  exceptionally,  that  such  ob- 
jects leave  an  imprint  upon  the  sensitive 
plate  of  our  memory?"  Accident,  of  a 
surety,  or  else  a  particularly  sensitive 
plate.  If  indeed  our  eye  functions  me- 
chanically somewhat  in  the  manner  of  a 
photograph  lens,  we  are  compelled,  in 
order  not  to  clutter  the  storehouse  of  our 
memory,  to  make  a  choice  of  the  images 
which  we  classify  therein.  In  this  an 
instinct  guides  us,  though  not  always 
infallibly,  and  calls  to  our  attention  those 
images  useful  to  the  conservation  or  the 
defense  of  our  life. 

Without  education,  without  civilized 
habits,  which  constantly  increase  the  num- 
ber of  our  requirements  of  every  kind,  we 
should,  like  animals,  have  need  to  retain 
but  a  small  number  of  images. 

The  life  of  animals  moves  in  a  rather 
restricted  circle,  and   there  is  not  one  of 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

their  acts  that  is  not  dictated  by  utility. 
Men,  too,  obey  the  rule  of  utility,  but  their 
imagination  magnifies  this  field  of  the 
useful  in  a  singular  manner,  and  they  find 
themselves  obliged,  for  the  purpose  of 
mere  existence,  to  open  their  memory  to  a 
considerable  number  of  images  to  which 
animals  are  absolutely  indifferent.  We 
behold  on  a  table,  in  a  single  glance,  the 
plates,  the  food,  the  flowers,  the  glasses 
and  all  the  rest;  the  dog  sees  only  the  food; 
the  flowers  that  give  us  pleasure,  the  gen- 
eral arrangement  that  charms  us,  leave 
him  utterly  insensible  to  their  attraction. 
There  are  also  things  to  the  sight  of  which 
we  are  ourselves  insensible:  those  which 
are  neither  beautiful  nor  ugly,  nor  useful, 
nor  harmful,  neither  good  nor  bad, — 
everything  that  is  not  worth  the  trouble 
of  being  qualified,  everything  that  is  neutral 
to  our  senses  as  to  our  imagination.  If, 
then,  we  are  asked  to  give  testimony  re- 
garding the  existence  of  these  objects, 
regarding  the  reality  of  those  things  that 

124 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

cause  us  neither  pain  nor  pleasure,  and 
which,  therefore,  we  have  neglected  to 
retain  in  our  memory,  we  should  be  greatly 
embarrassed. 

In  general,  when  we  are  questioned  we 
have  a  tendency  to  affirm  that  which  we 
believe  probable  and  to  deny  the  case  that 
seems  to  us  improbable.  Thus,  in  the  case 
of  the  window,  this  window,  opening  upon 
an  interior  corridor,  seemed  to  the  students 
who  were  questioned  quite  improbable, 
since  the  thing  was  useless,  even  absurd. 

In  the  second  place,  and  this  is  very 
important,  we  hold  in  our  minds  a  series 
of  types  of  fact  to  which  invariably  we 
relate  the  new  events  that  we  happen  to 
witness.  If,  for  example,  we  are  in  princi- 
ple assured  that  every  automobile  accident 
is  due  to  the  drivers  of  these  vehicles,  it 
is  with  difficulty  that  we  admit,  even  if 
we  have  seen  it  with  our  own  eyes,  that  the 
accident  was  the  fault  of  the  victim.  The 
case  will  be  just  the  contrary  with  the 
chauffeur:     to   him,   the   victim   is   always 

125 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

in  the  wrong.  But  if,  for  us,  the  chauffeur 
is  always  wrong,  our  attitude  is  equally 
unreasonable.  In  either  case,  the  images 
will  be  distorted  and  if  we  are  questioned, 
we  will  reply  with  lies  uttered  in  all  good 
faith:  "This  is  so  because  it  ought  to  be 
so."  M.  Claparede  even  goes  so  far  as  to 
admit  that  the  evidence  of  various  indi- 
viduals may  be  erroneous,  even  if  they  all 
agree.  I  am  of  his  opinion,  because  it  is 
quite  normal  that  the  same  interest  or  the 
same  absence  of  interest  unconsciously 
guides  witnesses  of  diverse  origin  and  con- 
dition. All  the  ancient  explorers  of  the 
Kerguelen  Isles  saw  there  only  sterile  and 
uninhabitable  lands.  Yet  in  recent  days 
a  colony  composed  of  men  from  Havre  and 
Norwegians  has  established  itself  there 
and  finds  the  country  rough,  but  healthful 
and  well  suited  not  only  to  fishing  but  also 
to  pasturage. 

It  appears,  from  all  this,  that  our  eyes 
are  uncertain.  Two  persons  look  at  the 
same  clock  and  there  is  a  difference  of  two 

126 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

or  three  minutes  in  their  reading  of  the 
time.  One  has  a  tendency  to  put  back  the 
hands,  the  other  to  advance  them.  Let  us 
not  too  confidently  try  to  play  the  part  of 
the  third  person  who  wishes  to  set  the 
first  two  aright;  it  may  well  happen  that 
we  are  mistaken  in  turn.  Besides,  in  our 
daily  life,  we  have  less  need  of  certainty 
than  of  a  certain  approximation  to  certainty. 
Let  us  learn  how  to  see,  but  without  look- 
ing too  closely  at  things  and  men:  they 
look  better  from  a  distance. 


127 


THE  COLORS  OF  LIFE 


THE  COLORS  OF  LIFE 

IT  was  formerly  the  custom  in  such 
provinces  as  Normandy,  for  example, 
or  Britanny,  to  consecrate  children 
to  the  color  blue.  The  vow  was  limited  to 
a  certain  number  of  years, —  seven,  four- 
teen, or  twenty-one, —  probably  because  of 
the  virtues  of  the  number  seven,  as  consid- 
erable as  they  are  mysterious.  Most  often 
the  final  figure  was  decided  upon, —  the 
age  of  reason,  says  the  Church,  which 
considers  it  never  too  soon  to  place  its 
hand  upon  the  conscience  and  the  will. 
It  was  charming  for  the  little  girls,  though 
somewhat  monotonous;  on  the  contrary, 
it  was  troublesome  to  the  little  boys.  But 
it    seems    the    custom    was    efficacious    in 

131 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  .  PARIS 

warding  off  the  illnesses  of  childhood,  and 
that  it  drew  to  the  "consecrated  one"  the 
protection  of  the  gods  —  I  mean,  of  the 
Virgin  —  and  of  the  celestial  court.  The 
divine  personages,  inhabiting  the  sky, 
which  is  blue,  were  in  fact  seen  in  blue  by 
the  popular  imagination,  and  to  adopt 
their  color  and  assume  their  livery  was  to 
put  oneself  in  the  shelter  of  their  power 
and  win  their  good  grace. 

Women,  through  an  analogous,  though 
much  more  complicated  and  varied  sym- 
bolism, often  select  a  color  and  match  all 
the  elements  of  their  toilette  to  it  as  far  as 
fashion  permits.  It  is  exceedingly  diffi- 
cult to  ascertain  the  reason  for  their  choice. 
They  themselves  are  at  a  loss  for  explana- 
tion. Often  they  believe  that  they  have 
chosen  the  color  or  the  shade  that  best 
frames  their  complexion  or  that  harmonizes 
best  with  the  color  of  their  hair.  But  often 
they  go  astray.  Those  who  are  fond  of 
bright  blue  would  look  far  prettier  in  very 
pale   green    or   in  deep   red,   for  example. 

132 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  .  PARIS 

They  admit  this,  but  for  form's  sake  only: 
a  secret  power  holds  them  to  the  color  that 
they  have  desired  through  instinct, —  the 
color  under  which  they  will  live,  under 
which  they  will  know  love  and  all  the  joys 
and  all  the  tears  of  life. 

Not  only  women,  but  men  have  their 
color.  We  seem  to  do  the  choosing,  but 
it  is  nature  that  imposes  it  upon  us, —  it  is 
she  that  dedicates  us  to  the  shade  that 
shall  be  our  favorite  atmosphere. 

One  who  will  never  feel  merry  amid  red 
hangings  will  grow  cheerful  amid  green  or 
yellow.  Astrologers  say  that  we  are  domi- 
nated by  a  planet  that  controls  our  destiny. 
This  is  not  very  easy  to  understand.  On 
the  contrary,  nobody  would  deny  the  role 
played  in  our  lives  by  colors.  Would  such 
and  such  a  woman  have  evoked  the  passion 
which  is  today  her  happiness  if  her  gown, 
on  that  evening,  had  been  rose  and  not 
mauve?  Who  can  tell?  It  requires  so 
little  to  entrance  the  eye  and  so  little  to 
provoke  it.     A  false  note,  and  the  concert 

*33 


PHILOSOPHIC     NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

that  was  thrilling  us  fills  us  with  laughter. 
If  Cleopatra's  nose,  said  Pascal,  had  been 
shorter,  the  face  of  the  world  would  have 
been  changed.  As  for  me,  I  believe  that 
Cleopatra  rather  resembled  Dido,  who, 
according  to  Scarron's  mot,  was  "some- 
what snub-nosed,  in  the  African  style." 
Perhaps  it  was  really  the  happy  shade  of 
her  tunic,  the  harmonious  hue  of  her  pep- 
lum  that  vanquished  Antony  and  brought 
him  to  the  feet  of  the  queen  of  Egypt. 
History,  which  so  often  gossips  beside  the 
point,  is  mute  upon  this  capital  question. 
Nevertheless,  were  I  to  write  the  life  of 
Cleopatra,  I  should  write  it  in  green, — 
Nile  green,  of  course, —  and  nobody,  I 
believe,  would  have  the  effrontery  to  con- 
tradict me. 

Writing  lives  or  stories  in  such  and  such 
a  color  is  one  of  the  things  I  have  recently 
tried  to  do,  and  the  attempt  has  in  some 
instances  proved  to  be  a  rather  delicate 
affair  to  manage.  There  are  blue  women; 
there  are  rose  ones,  and  mauve  and  red; 

134 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN-    PARIS 

that  is  to  say,  they  may  be  scarcely  repre- 
sented except  in  association  with  one  of 
these  colors  or  shades.  Conceiving  an  old 
maid  who  had  retained  her  good  looks, 
who  was  very  pious  and  yet  of  very  equiv- 
ocal habits,  I  could  see  her  only  in  violet. 
The  story  is  violet  from  beginning  to  end; 
it  was  impossible  for  me  to  introduce  a 
different  hue;  I  would  have  felt  that  I  was 
committing  a  gross  offence  against  har- 
mony. The  lady  is  vowed  to  violet:  to 
place  upon  her  head  a  blue  or  rose  hat 
would  have  been  a  sort  of  sacrilege  which 
would  have  terrified  even  her.  Can  this 
be  the  reason  why  her  narrow  life  as  an  old 
maid  found  late  in  life  so  many  happy,  if 
perverse,  days?  Without  a  doubt,  for 
violet,  which  is  her  color,  is  also  her  logic, 
and  it  is  always  well  to  have  respected  the 
logic  of  one's  destiny. 

Now,  in  thus  amusing  myself,  I  have  not 
made  any  pretensions  toward  reforming 
esthetics,  nor  toward  revolutionizing  the 
conditions  of  the  art  of  writing.     I   have 

*35 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

simply  been  playing  with  a  box  of  pastels, 
loving  the  colors  for  themselves,  one  by 
one,  somewhat  in  the  manner  of  the  great 
and  singular  artist  Odilon  Redon,  whose 
flowers  are  so  real  that  one  is  moved  to 
smell  them.  ; 

We  have  our  favorite  colors.  Tastes  and 
colors. . . .  This  aphorism  is  not  at  all  so 
frivolous  as  one  might  believe.  Nietzsche, 
who  was  by  no  means  a  superficial  spirit, 
cites  it  willingly.  It  is  an  argument  that 
favors  individualistic  philosophy  and  free- 
dom of  thought.  It  is  an  argument,  too, 
and  not  the  least  valuable,  that  supports 
determinism  and  the  philosophy  of  neces- 
sity. For  the  colors  we  love  are  not  dic- 
tated by  choice  but  by  a  secret  sympathy 
which  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  reason  out. 
The  study  of  tastes  and  colors  should  form 
part  of  psychology.  Perhaps  there  might 
even  be  discovered  here  the  elements  of  a 
new  science.  Being  fond  of  red  or  of  green 
is  not  a  matter  to  be  dismissed  with  in- 
difference. 

136 


PHILOSOPHIC  ■  NIGHTS  •  IN  .  PARIS 

A  preference  for  red  indicates  rudeness, 
and  the  fondness  for  green  reveals  tender- 
ness of  character.  It  is  known,  moreover, 
that  red  is  an  excitant,  while  green  induces 
repose,  and  meditation.  The  studios  of 
the  firm  of  Lumiere,  where  photographic 
plates  are  prepared,  were  at  first  provided 
with  red  panes  of  glass;  but  this  led  to 
such  effervescence, —  the  men  and  women, 
after  several  hours  of  red  gazed  at  one 
another  with  such  sparkling  eyes,  that  it 
was  necessary  to  have  recourse  to  panes 
of  a  soothing  color.  Men  that  come  from 
large  cities,  overexcited  by  the  disharmony 
of  sounds  and  colors,  can  regain  a  bit  of 
calm  only  amid  the  forests  and  the  prairies 
or  at  the  sea-shore,  which  is  green  when 
it  is  not  blue.  Blue  is  the  most  soothing 
of  colors,  and  it  is  doubtless  thanks  to  its 
blue  sky  that  the  South  may  endure  the 
brilliancy  of  its  springs,  the  purple  of  its 
autumns. 

Color  has  its  importance.  Before  mak- 
ing friends  with  anyone,  before  undertaking 

i37 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

the  conquest  of  a  woman,  observe  what 
their  favorite  colors  are.  Think  at  the 
same  time  of  your  own,  and  try  to  make 
happy  combinations.  If  you  are  fond  of 
red,  take  to  yourself  a  dash  of  blue,  thus 
forming  an  agreeable  lilac;  and  if  it  is  blue 
that  charms  you,  do  not  reject  yellow;  this 
combination  will  give  you  all  the  shades  of 
green  and  will  assure  you  lifelong  peace. 
How  many  misfortunes  have  been  caused 
by  the  maladroit  mixing  of  hostile  colors! 
But  above  all,  beware  of  violet.  There  is 
no  more  perfidious  hue;  it  is,  among  the 
colors  of  life,  the  least  stable  and  the  most 
hypocritical. 


138 


THE  RIVERS  OF  FRANCE 


THE  RIVERS  OF  FRANCE 

A  river  is  a  beautiful  thing.  It  runs 
along,  its  sings,  it  laughs,  it  glints 
in  the  sunlight  and  becomes 
darker  beneath  the  trees.  Sometimes  one 
may  see  the  bottom,  where  there  are  stones 
and  grasses,  while  at  times  it  is  a  sombre 
abyss  that  fills  one  with  shudders.  The 
river  comes  from  afar  and  goes  no  one 
knows  whither.  True,  people  say  that  it 
has  a  beginning  and  that  its  source  lies 
yonder,  in  the  mountains,  but  that  is  not 
at  all  so  certain.  What  is  a  source?  When 
you  see  a  river,  it  is  already  a  river  and 
it  never  occurs  to  you  that  it  may  ever 
have  been  only  a  tiny  ribbon  of  water 
trickling  down  from  a  rock.  In  olden 
days,  when  the  world  was  happy,  things 

i4i 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

were  far  different.  Rivers  flowed  from 
a  marble  pitcher  which  was  held  in  the 
hands  of  an  eternally  youthful,  drooping 
maiden.  But  the  wicked  god  of  the  Chris- 
tians, who  is  not  fond  of  maidens'  beauty, 
broke  those  marble  pitchers;  the  mothers 
of  rivers  died  of  grief  and  now  the  rivers 
are  born  by  accident,  as  best  they  may  be. 
If  we  are  not  so  well  informed  about 
their  birth,  we  know  their  life  and  their 
death.  Their  life  is  to  bound  along  or  to 
flow  nonchalantly  on,  to  prattle  over  the 
pebbles  and  dream  amid  the  rushes.  Often, 
when  traversing  the  blooming  meadows 
they  love  to  spread  across  the  grass.  If 
dikes  or  tree-trunks  bar  the  way  they  are 
provoked  and  even  wax  furious.  But  if 
it  is  a  mill  that  rises  before  them,  they 
turn  its  wheels  with  docile  promptness, 
and  continue  on  their  way  unperturbed. 
The  river  is  the  mother  of  men  and  trees, 
of  beasts  and  plants.  Without  the  river 
there  are  no  fish;  there  are  no  birds. 
There  are  no  crops,  no  flowers,  no  wine, 

142 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  .  IN  ■  PARIS 

no  cattle,  and  man  flees,  parched  by  the 
sun.  After  having  given  life,  the  river 
has  two  ways  of  dying;  either  it  expands 
into  the  bosom  of  a  larger  river  or  flows 
directly  to  mingle  with  the  sea;  the  sea 
is  the  vast  cemetery  of  all  the  rivers, — 
of  the  smallest  as  well  as  the  greatest. 
But  the  river  that  dies  is  nevertheless 
just  as  eternal  as  the  ocean  that  receives 
it  into  its  depths.  The  clouds  are  born 
of  the  sea,  and  the  wind  wafts  them  toward 
the  forests,  where  they  make  rain  and 
swell  the  streams.  There  is  in  the  world 
a  circulation  of  water  as  in  our  bodies 
there  is  a  circulation  of  blood.  All  this 
is  well  regulated.  The  sea  loves  the  river. 
It  comes  to  meet  the  stream  and  sends  it 
as  greeting  the  salt  tang  of  its  waves. 
The  river  fears  this  infinitude.  For  a 
long  time  it  resists.  At  last,  the  sweet 
waters  yield  and  melt  under  the  powerful 
kisses  of  the  brine:  the  swell  of  the  waves 
lulls  the  wedded  waters  to  rest. 

The  river  is  a  person.     It  has  a  name. 

143 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

This  name  is  very  ancient,  because  the 
river,  although  perpetually  young,  is  very 
old.  It  existed  before  men  and  before 
birds.  Ever  since  men  were  born  they 
loved  the  rivers,  and  as  soon  as  they  learned 
how  to  speak  they  gave  them  names. 
Even  when  we  no  longer  understand  them, 
the  names  of  the  rivers  are  the  most  beauti- 
ful in  the  world.  There  is  the  Gironde 
and  the  Adour;  the  Loire  and  the  Vienne, 
the  Rhone  and  the  Ariege.  But  perhaps 
it  is  possible  to  understand  these  names. 
Let  us  try,  by  having  recourse  to  the 
studies  of  a  geographical  scholar,  M.  Raoul 
de  Felice.  Our  rivers  have  received  their 
names  from  the  various  races  that  anciently 
occupied  Gaul:  The  Iberians,  an  unknown 
people,  the  Ligurians,  the  Celts.  At  the 
moment  of  the  Roman  conquest,  almost 
all  the  streams  of  France  possess  a  name. 
So  that  modern  names  are  very  rare.  The 
Iberians  were  probably  Basques,  if  not  in 
race  at  least  in  language.  Even  if  this  is 
contested,  that  would  not  prevent  us  from 

144 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

tracing  the  word  Adour  back  to  the  Basque 
word  iturria,  which  means  spring,  source. 
It  is  to  the  Iberians  that  we  likewise  owe 
names  such  as  the  Aude,  the  Orbieu,  the 
Urugne.  Here  probably  came  a  people 
yet  unknown,  but  of  Indo-European  lan- 
guage, which  was  perhaps  the  godfather 
to  many  of  our  rivers.  To  this  people  it 
may  be  we  owe  the  names  Somme,  Sevre, 
Herault, —  names  that  are  derived  from 
various  roots  signifying  water,  liquid, 
source.  According  to  the  same  theory, 
Durance,  Drone,  Drot,  Drac  might  be 
translated  by  "the  running  water,"  and 
the  same  idea  would  be  found  in  the  name 
Rhone,  while  the  Loire  would  be  "the 
stream  that  waters;"  the  Meurthe,  "she 
who  moistens."  As  to  the  Garonne,  that 
would  be,  "the  rapid  one";  but  the  matter 
is  still  under  discussion:  the  Garonne  has 
not  given  up  its  secret,  any  more  than  the 
Gironde.  We  may  note,  in  passing,  that 
there  are  in  France  three  other  Garonnes, 
without   taking  into   account   a   Garon,   a 

H5 


PHILOSOPHIC  ■  NIGHTS  .  IN  •  PARIS 

Garonnette,  and  a  Garonnelle;  there  are 
seven  or  eight  Girondes,  of  which  two  are  in 
the  environs  of  Paris,  tributaries  of  the  Orge 
and  the  Marne.  The  Oise  and  the  Is&re 
stand  for  the  same  thing, namely,"  the  rapid 
one,"  which  seems  rather  hazardous  to  me 
in  the  case  of  the  Oise.  Certain  rivers  flow 
in  a  deep-cut  bed;  thus  they  have  received 
a  name  which  would  signify  something  like 
case,  vase  or  sheath:  these  are  the  Couse, 
the  Cousin,  the  Cusom,  the  Cousanne,  the 
Couzeau,  and  the  names  Couzon. 

We  now  come  to  the  part  played  by  the 
Ligurians.  In  their  language  they  called 
the  alder-tree  that  grows  along  the  banks 
of  so  many  rivers,  alisos,  alsia  or  alison. 
They  gave  this  name  to  a  number  of 
streams;  Alzon,  Alzou,  Alzau,  Auzon, 
Auzonne,  Auzonnet,  Arzon,  Auze,  Auzenne, 
Auzelle,  Auzotte,  Auzette,  Auzigue, 
Auzolle,  Auzone, —  all  of  which  would 
signify  the  rivers  of  the  alder-trees.  There 
would  also  be  left  to  be  explained  the 
origin  of  names  ending  in  enque>  such  as 

1 46    . 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  .  PARIS 

Allarenque,  Laurenque,  Durenque,  Viren- 
que,  but  it  is  not  known  what  they  mean. 
Finally,  one  could  not  deny  to  the  Ligurians 
the  name  Ligoure,  which  seems  to  be  the 
name  of  the  people  itself.  The  Aude  and 
the  Orb  probably  owe  their  designation 
to  the  Phoenician  settlers;  the  second  of 
these  is  perhaps  Greek.  With  the  Celtic 
period  the  etymologies  become  a  trifle  less 
uncertain.  The  Celtic  word  for  water, 
dour,  is  clearly  found  in  the  Dourbie,  the 
Dourdene  and  the  Dourdeze,  the  Dourdon, 
the  Dore  and  the  Doire.  Another  Celtic 
name  for  water,  esca,  is  seen  in  the  Ouche, 
the  Essonne.  They  called  a  river  avar; 
hence,  the  Abron,  the  Jabron,  the  Aveyron, 
the  Arveiron,  the  Auron;  hence  probably 
also  the  Eure,  the  Auterne,  the  Authre, 
the  Automne,  the  Autruche.  Aven  means 
river  in  the  present  Breton  dialect;  now, 
we  find  rivers  called:  Avene,  Avon,  Avegne, 
Avignon.  From  glanos,  meaning  brilliant, 
gleaming,  are  perhaps  derived  the  Gland, 
the  Glane;    from   vernos,   alder-tree,   they 

147 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

have  like  the  Ligurians  christened  many 
rivers:  the  Vern,  the  Vernaison,  the  Verna- 
zon;  from  der,  oak,  came  the  Dere.  It 
should  be  added  that  all  these  words  came 
down  to  us  through  the  Latin  form  before 
acquiring  their  French  form.  Thus  Bievre 
and  its  derivatives  Beuvron,  Brevenne, 
Brevonne,  derive  from  the  Latin  bibrum^ 
itself  borrowed  from  a  Celtic  word  meaning 
beaver.  Is  it  to  the  Gauls  or  the  Romans 
that  we  owe  the  names  Dive,  Divette, 
Divonne?  Does  this  mean  here  the  fairy, 
or  the  divine  one?  It  is  difficult  to  ascer- 
tain. There  were  great  resemblances  be- 
tween the  tongues. 

French  and  its  dialects  have  naturally 
named  a  large  number  of  rivers,  either  by 
rechristening  them  or  modifying  the  old 
names  to  give  them  a  French  meaning. 
In  this  class  we  have  the  names  suggested 
by  the  appearance  or  the  qualities  of  the 
river:1    the  Blanche,  the  Claire,  the  Brune, 

1  These  signify,  in  the  order  of  occurrence:  white,  clear,  dark, 
black,  gleaming,  hideous,  ugly,  furious,  gnawing,  tinkling,  hollow, 
sensible. 

I48 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

the  Noire,  the  Brillant,  the  Hideuse,  the 
Vilaine,  the  Furieuse,  the  Rongeant,  the 
Sonnant,  the  Creuse,  the  Sensee.  At  other 
times  the  names  come  from  plants,2  such 
as  Fusain,  Orge,  Viorne,  Liane,  Gland, 
Orne,  Oignon,  Trefle,  Rouvre,  Lys,  Aunes, 
Bruyere,  Troene;  names  of  animals:3  Oie, 
Loir,  Louvette,  Chevre,  Heron,  Ourse, 
Lionne,  Autruche;  names  of  every  kind:4 
Mere,  Cousin,  Sueur,  Coquille,  Oeil,  Oeuf, 
Rognon,  Breche,  Vie,  Automne,  Blaise, 
Armance,  Abime.  Some  proudly  bear  ab- 
solute names:  le  Fleuve  (the  Stream),  la 
Riviere  (the  River);  it  so  happens  that 
they  are  only  rivulets,  the  one  in  la  Manche, 
the  other  in  the  Alps.  And  finally,  a  little 
river  that  is  probably  very  wise  is  called 
la  Meme  (the  Same).  The  majority  of 
these  later  names  I  have  taken  directly 
from  the  map,  but  a  good  part  of  my 
learning    I    have    borrowed    from    M.    de 

2  Prickwood,    barley,   liburnum,   liana,    acorn,   flowering-ash, 
onion,  clover,  common  oak,  lily,  alder-trees,  heather,  privet. 

3  Goose,  dormouse,  she-wolf,  goat,  heron,  bear,  lioness,  ostrich. 

4  Mother,  cousin,  sweat,  shell,  eye,  egg,  kidney,  breach,  life, 
autumn.  Blase,  Armance,  abyss. 

149 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

Felice,  who  has  given  us  a  great  deal,  free 
from  all  pedantry,  in  his  book  upon  les 
Noms  de  nos  Rivieres  (The  Names  of  our 
Rivers.)  Is  it  not  pleasant  to  know  that 
the  Seine  means  "  the  gushing  one  ? "  Those 
who  wish  to  learn  more  may  consult  the 
source  I  have  indicated.  It  is  with  pain 
that  I  wrest  myself  away  from  the  charms 
of  the  rivers  of  France,  for 

La  riviere  est  la  mere  de  toute  la  nature. 
The  river  is  the  mother  of  all  nature. 


150 


THE  PLAYER'S  ILLUSION 


THE  PLAYER'S  ILLUSION 

THE  player  at  games  of  skill  is 
always  tempted  to  attribute  to 
himself  a  capacity  superior  to 
his  real  power.  Such  is  the  theorem  ad- 
vanced in  a  curious  study,  half  psycho- 
logical and  half  algebraic,  by  an  Algerian 
engineer,  Monsieur  V.  Cornetz.  The 
player's  desire  to  win,  the  recollection  of 
his  past  successes,  his  confidence  in  him- 
self, necessarily  cause  him,  at  a  given 
moment,  to  think  himself  stronger  than 
he  really  is.  So  that,  if  he  wins,  he  is  not 
surprised;  but  if  he  loses,  he  will  tell 
himself:  "I  could  have  done  better;  I 
didn't  do  my  best,  I  didn't  concentrate  all 
my  attention."  For  such  an  estimate  of 
himself  to  be  just,  it  would  be  necessary 

i53 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  -  PARIS 

for  the  player  to  base  the  idea  of  his 
strength  not  only  upon  the  average  of  his 
previous  victories,  but  also  of  his  defeats. 
Self-conceit,  however,  prevents  unsuccess- 
ful contests  from  coming  to  his  mind  to 
counterbalance  the  remembrance  of  his 
winnings.  It  comes  about,  then,  that  the 
player  constantly  overrates  himself,  and 
in  all  good  faith.  Whatever  be  his  charac- 
ter, he  is  never  tempted  to  attribute  to 
himself  a  value  less  than  his  real  worth. 
The  modesty  of  certain  players  is  all  upon 
the  surface  and  the  mistrust  of  themselves, 
which  they  proclaim,  is  transformed  into 
excessive  confidence  as  soon  as  the  game 
has  begun.  A  player  is  a  man  who  always 
compares  himself  to  other  men.  He  judges 
himself,  not  as  an  individual  independent 
of  his  surroundings,  but  under  the  pressure 
of  a  vanity  that  is  ever  egged  on  by  the 
presence  of  rival  vanities.  The  moment 
two  such  vanities  clash,  each  of  necessity 
seeks  victory,  and  begins  by  attributing 
to    itself,    without    the    least    regard    for 

T54 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

reality,  the  strength  necessary  for  success, 
To  accept  the  combat  is  in  itself,  is  it  not, 
to  believe  that  one  is  the  stronger? 

Monsieur  Cornetz  deals  particularly 
with  the  chess-player,  but  his  observations, 
as  he  himself  says  in  his  preface,  are  applica- 
ble to  all  games  that  are  not  purely  games 
of  chance,  and  even  to  athletic  contests, 
fencing  matches,  and  one  might  add,  mili- 
tary operations,  even  of  the  most  serious 
nature.  To  wage  battle  is  to  play  a  game. 
This  psychology  of  the  player  is  also  that 
of  the  general.  How  many  battles  have 
been  lost  because  the  general  overesti- 
mated himself.  How  many  governments 
even  have  fallen  because  they  were  aban- 
doned to  the  illusions  of  their  self-conceit! 
Does  not  Napoleon  III  gayly  setting  out 
for  the  frontier  provide  the  spectacle  par 
excellence  of  the  player  who  overrates 
himself?  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a 
disinterested  contest;  the  dullest  game  of 
cards  excites  in  the  opponents  a  certain 
desire    to    win.     The    very   persons    who 

i55 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

boasted  of  their  entire  detachment  are 
often  the  most  eager  to  win  once  the  game 
has  started;  they  enter  into  it  excitedly 
and  when  worsted  keep  watching  for  a 
favorable  opening.  Those  players  who  be- 
lieve that  they  play  the  game  for  the  sole 
interest  of  its  combinations,  its  emotions, 
are  then,  admitting  their  good  faith,  the  vic- 
tims of  an  illusion:  they  judge  themselves  to 
be  other  than  they  are.  This  is  a  rather 
common  attitude  in  life.  We  all  of  us 
believe  ourselves  more  or  less  to  be  other 
than  we  really  are;  so  much  so  that  an 
ingenious  philosopher,  M.  Jules  de  Gaul- 
tier,  has  created  a  special  term  by  which 
to  denominate  this  universal  penchant. 
He  calls  it  Bovarysm,  referring  to  the 
heroine  of  Flaubert's  novel,  who  thought 
herself  a  grande  amoureuse  when  she  was 
really  nothing  but  a  poor  little  sick  woman. 
The  player  who  pretends  that  he  plays 
without  any  interest  in  victory  is  afflicted 
with  Bovarysm.  But  perhaps  he  is  also 
intent  upon  shielding  his  self-conceit  in 
156 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  .  PARIS 

case  of  failure.  Beaten,  he  will  vow  that 
he  had  as  good  a  time  as  if  he  had  won. 
This  is  a  manner  of  self-consolation  that 
does  not  lack  a  certain  elegance.  The 
fox  who  found  the  grapes  too  sour  has 
furnished  us  with  a  charming  example  of 
this  disdainful  attitude.  M.  Cornetz  has 
seen,  in  Algiers,  on  an  old  Arabian  chess- 
board, this  motto:  "The  loser  always  has 
his  excuse."  The  basis  of  these  excuses 
is  this:  "I  should  have  played  otherwise. 
If  I  had  used  such  and  such  a  pawn,  or 
queen,  or  card,  I  would  doubtless  have 
won."  Who  has  not  been  present  at  those 
post  mortems  where  the  players  forget 
only  this,  that  they  know,  at  the  moment 
of  discussion,  things  that  they  did  not 
know  while  the  game  was  in  full  swing? 
The  truth  is  that  at  a  given  moment,  when 
one  is  seriously  playing  the  game,  one  is 
playing  as  well  as  he  can,  no  more  and  no 
less.  The  loser  has  an  excuse;  very  well. 
But  it  is  precisely  because  he  is  the  loser. 
The    winner   needs    none.     To    be    winner 

i57 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  -  IN  .  PARIS 

is  a  fact;  to  be  loser  is  another.  There  is 
in  facts  a  logic,  and  the  reason  of  the 
strongest  is  always  the  best.  To  believe, 
when  one  has  been  beaten,  that  one  might 
not  have  been,  is  by  that  very  fact  to 
suppose  that  one  might,  at  that  moment, 
have  been  another  person,  which  is  absurd. 
But  perhaps  this  illusion  is  due  to  inevita- 
ble causes.  The  chief  point  is,  as  I  have 
already  said,  that  at  the  moment  when 
we  have  been  beaten  we  recall,  not  our 
former  defeats,  but  rather  our  former 
victories,  and  the  victories  only.  We  at- 
tribute to  ourselves  a  general  capability, 
a  capability  that  is  a  matter  of  principle, 
and  which  may  not  be  shaken  by  an  acci- 
dental momentary  inferiority.  It  never 
occurs  to  us, —  our  vanity  prevents  it, —  that 
our  real  worth  is  probably  but  a  fairly 
equitable  composite  of  equally  accidental 
inferiorities  and  superiorities.  The  balance 
will  always  incline  toward  the  side  of  our 
self-conceit. 

It    should    be    recognized    that,    if    this 

158 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

illusion  of  our  self-conceit  has  its  great 
inconveniences,  if  it  vitiates  our  critical 
judgment,  not  only  of  ourselves  but  of 
others,  if  it  betrays  us  into  false  estimates, 
it  possesses,  on  the  other  hand,  great  ad- 
vantages. "The  illusion  that  accompanies 
man  in  the  course  of  his  life,"  says  M. 
Cornetz,  "is  a  necessary  condition  of 
existence,  a  precious  product  of  the  vital 
instinct."  The  man  who  overestimates 
himself  is  also  he  who  is  capable  of  sur- 
passing himself.  It  is  necessary,  in  this 
great  game  of  life,  to  have  confidence  in 
oneself.  If  one  estimated  oneself  only  at 
his  proper  value,  one  would  not  estimate 
himself  sufficiently.  If  we  did  not  grant 
to  ourselves  a  power  superior  to  our  real 
power,  we  would  never  dare  to  undertake 
the  impossible;  now  it  is  perhaps  only  the 
impossible  that  is  worthy  of  being  under- 
taken. From  the  purely  practical  point 
of  view,  if  the  end  to  be  attained  were  not 
embellished  by  illusion,  would  we  ever 
set  about  the  task?     It  is  well  for  a  man, 

i59 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

after  a  game  of  chess,  to  be  able  to  say  in 
all  simplicity:  "I  could  have  played  other- 
wise." That  is  not  true,  of  course,  but  it 
may  create  in  the  future  a  great  truth. 
Error  is  a  great  generator  of  truths.  The 
truth  of  today  has  its  root  in  the  error  of 
yesterday.  Illusions  have  often  created 
real  powers.  "You  could  do  better,"  says 
the  teacher  to  his  pupil.  He  thus  implants 
in  the  child's  mind  a  belief,  an  idea  which 
will  at  once  engender  a  hope,  and  in  the 
future,  a  force.  Then  let  us  not  scoff  too 
gayly  at  the  player  who  has  such  firm  confi- 
dence in  himself.  Doubtless  this  self- 
same confidence  will  lead  him  to  accept 
unequal  battles  in  which  he  will  be  worsted; 
but  it  will  happen  also  that  he  will  emerge 
victor  from  struggles  into  which  he  would 
not  have  dared  to  venture  had  not  benefi- 
cent illusion  considerably  magnified  in  his 
eyes  his  real  capacity.  And  finally,  it 
happens  in  many  cases  that  the  real  worth 
of  a  person  coincides  with  the  estimate 
placed  upon  him  by  his  self-conceit.     One 

1 60 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

need  not  trust  to  it  too  much;  it's  only  a 
matter  of  a  game.  On  the  other  hand  one 
need  not  on  that  account  fear  to  repeat 
the  old  proverb:  "Nothing  venture,  noth- 
ing have."  All  languages  of  the  world 
have  similar  proverbs.  This  helps  to  show 
that  all  peoples  have  recognized  that  cer- 
tain efforts  are  impossible  without  certain 
illusions,  and  that,  of  all  principles  of 
action,  the  most  powerful  and  the  most 
fruitful  is  still  self-confidence. 


INSINUATIONS 


INSINUATIONS. 

Esthetic  Morality. 

Perhaps  we  ought  to  renounce  such  dis- 
tinctions as  beautiful  and  ugly,  good  and 
bad,  good  and  evil,  and  so  on,  and  consider 
in  life's  acts  only  the  curve  of  movements. 
Thus  morality  and  esthetics  would  blend. 
Already  men  of  more  than  average  culture 
consider  the  subject  of  a  painting  only  to 
judge  whether  the  painter  has  submitted  to 
the  same  logic  the  subject  of  the  picture 
itself,  the  composition  that  compasses  it,  the 
color  that  unites  it  to  the  vital  milieu.  A 
subject,  in  art,  may  be  criticized  only  in 
relation  to  the  purpose  of  the  work  and  the 
manner  in  which  it  is  treated.  It  might  be 
the  same  with  human  acts,  in  which  case 

165 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  ■  PARIS 

they  would  be  judged  only  according  to 
their  opportunity  and  their  esthetic  curves. 
One  must  act, —  must  be  always  stirring; 
life  is  a  series  of  movements,  the  lines  of 
which  interlace.  This  forms  a  design. 
Is  it  harmonious?  That  is  the  whole  ques- 
tion;  that  is  all  of  morality. 


Another  Point  of  View. 

In  order  to  make  a  system  of  morality  by 
separating  what  is  good  from  what  is  evil 
we  must  have  fixed  principles,  a  definite 
belief, —  and  we  live  in  an  age  of  skepticism. 
Doubtless  religion  is  not  true,  but  neither 
is  anti-religion  true:  truth  dwells  in  a  per- 
fect indifference.  Governments  should  re- 
strict themselves  to  a  truly  scientific  neu- 
trality and  consider  all  manifestations  of 
intelligence  or  feeling  legitimate,  whatever 
their  nature.  The  State  should  be  but  a 
visible  providence,  a  sovereign  police  that 
would  protect  the  exercise  of  all  human 
activity,  opposing  only  those  deeds  which 

166 


PHILOSOPHIC  ■  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

could  fetter  the  plenitude  of  all  liberties, 
of  every  kind. 

It  is  here  that  one  must  make  a  distinc- 
tion, though  it  is  hardly  scientific,  between 
the  body  and  the  mind,  sensitive  matter 
and  the  will.  Without  a  doubt  acts  directed 
against  bodily  sensibility  should  be  re- 
pressed; but  the  case  is  not  the  same  with 
acts  against  the  intellectual  sensibility. 
Acts  called  immoral  may  be  prohibited  in 
such  a  measure  as  custom  recommends; 
provocations  to  immoral  acts  should  be  per- 
mitted. The  only  crime  is  the  crime  of  vio- 
lence. It  matters  little  that  I  am  asked  to 
do  something  by  written  or  spoken  word; 
the  evil  begins  only  when  I  am  made  to  do 
so  by  force. 

The  Word  "God." 

Renan  loved  it,  finding  it  convenient  for 
the  connotation  of  an  entire  order  of  ideas, 
none  of  which  is  easily  limited  verbally.  It 
is  undefinable;    and  moreover,  if  it   were 

167 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  ■  PARIS 

defined  it  would  lose  all  its  value.  God  is 
not  all  that  exists;  God  is  all  that  does  not 
exist.  Therein  resides  the  power  and  the 
charm  of  that  mysterious  word.  God  is 
tradition,  God  is  legend,  God  is  folklore,  God 
is  a  fairy-tale,  God  is  a  romance,  God  is  a  lie, 
God  is  a  bell,  God  is  a  church  window,  God 
is  religion,  God  is  all  that  is  absurd,  useless, 
invisible,  intangible,  all  that  is  nothingness 
and  that  symbolizes  nothingness.  God  is 
the  nihil  in  tenebris  —  (nothing  in  the  dark- 
ness) —  men  have  made  of  him  light,  life 
and  love. 


Money. 

It  is  hard  to  read  without  irritation  the  old 
pleasantries  of  the  journalists  and  the 
ancient  lamentations  of  socialists  upon  the 
worship  of  the  golden  calf.  To  rail  at 
money,  to  wax  indignant  against  it,  are 
equally  silly.  Money  is  nothing;  its  power 
is  purely  symbolical.  Money  is  the  sign  of 
liberty.     To  curse  money  is  to  curse  liberty, 

168 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

—  to  curse  life,  which  is  nothing,  if  it  be  not 
free. 

Popular  simplicity  adores  money.  Look 
at  that  poor  huckstress:  she  makes  the  sign 
of  the  cross  with  the  first  coin  she  takes  in 
during  the  morning.  A  God  has  come  to 
visit  her  and  bless  her.  It  is  a  communion 
at  once  mystic  and  real,  in  the  guise  of 
metal. 

Money,  which  is  liberty,  is  also  fecunda- 
tion. It  is  the  universal  sperm  without 
which  human  societies  would  remain  but 
barren  wombs.  Paganism,  which  knew  and 
understood  everything,  opens  to  a  shower 
of  gold  from  on  high  the  conquered  thighs  of 
Danae.  That  is  what  we  should  see  on  our 
coins,  instead  of  a  meaningless  head,  if  we 
were  capable  of  contemplating  without  em- 
barrassment that  religious  tableau. 

Antinomy 

The  most  interesting  thing  about  man  is 
man  as  the  human  animal.  Almost  all  the 
rest  is  folly.     As  soon  as  he  loses  contact 

169 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

with  nature,  with  primitive  nature,  man 
wanders.  Yet  it  is  this  very  divagation  that 
is  called  reason,  wisdom,  morality.  And 
the  natural  conduct  that  man  might  follow, 
and  which  he  sometimes  does  follow,  is 
called  unreason,  immorality.  But,  through 
a  balance  of  logic,  this  immorality  that  we 
disparage  we  make  the  sole  object  of  our 
dreams,  our  desires,  our  speeches,  our  acts, 
our  meditations,  our  dissertations,  our  art 
and  our  science. 


The  Supernumerary. 

Monsieur  Tarde,  an  ingenious  and  bitter 
philosopher,  has  thus  defined  life:  "The 
pursuit  of  the  impossible  through  the 
useless." 

That  deserves  to  endure.  It  is  one  of 
those  sentences  that  one  would  like  to  see 
engraved  in  gold  upon  the  marbles  at  street 
corners.  It  is  undeniable  that  in  endowing 
man  with  an  immortal  soul  Christianity 
gave  to  life  an  inestimable  worth. 

170 


PHILOSOPHIC  ■  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

Deprived  of  the  infinite,  man  has  become 
what  he  always  was:    a  supernumerary. 

He  hardly  counts;  he  forms  part  of  the 
troupe  called  Humanity;  if  he  misses  a  cue, 
he  is  hissed;  and  if  he  drops  through  the 
trapdoor  another  puppet  is  in  readiness  to 
take  his  place. 


171 


THE  FALL  OF   DAYS 


THE  FALL  OF  DAYS 

THERE  is  a  fall  of  days  as  there  is  a 
fall  of  leaves.  I  do  not  know 
what  wind,  blowing  from  the  infi- 
nite, shakes  the  years,  and  sends  falling 
from  them  one  by  one  the  sere  and  yellow 
days.  Whither  do  they  go?  Whither  go 
the  sere  and  yellow  leaves?  To  the  great 
laboratory,  no  doubt,  where  Nature  fashions 
her  annual  resurrections.  They  will  return 
to  us  from  this  laboratory  as  green  as 
ever,  and  everlastingly  the  same  in  their 
unchangeable  designs,  those  of  the  poplar, 
which  are  hearts,  the  chestnut,  which 
are  hands,  the  aspen,  which  are  tridents, 
and  the  willow  leaves,  which  are  lances. 
But    what    becomes    of   days    when    they 

i75 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

have  fallen,  sere  and  yellow?  To  what 
remote,  unknown,  chimerical  worlds  are 
they  carried  off  forever?  For  they  are 
never  seen  again.  New  days  come, —  the 
foliage  of  the  years,—  unheralded  days, 
unexpected  days,  surprising  days,  days 
that  one  loves  and  days  that  one  fears; 
but  the  olden  days,  those  which  were 
familiar  to  us,  those  that  we  desire,  that 
we  wait  for,  will  never  return.  The  foliage 
of  the  year  will  be  so  well  renovated  that 
we  shall  no  longer  be  able  to  recognize  it  at 
all. 

Yes,  they  are  days.  They  have  a  be- 
ginning and  an  end,  they  have  light  and 
shadow,  they  are  born  of  night  and  into 
night  withdraw  to  die.  They  are  days, 
without  a  doubt,  but  not  the  same.  Their 
smiles  are  different,  and  also  their  frowns. 
The  joys  they  bring  us  are  not  distributed 
with  less  niggardliness,  but  they  have 
neither  the  same  perfume  nor  the  same 
color.  Hope  not  to  find  again  the  smile 
that  enchanted  you.     It  is  dead.     It  will 

176 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  .  PARIS 

not  return  to  the  face  you  love  any  more 
than  the  day  of  your  birth  will  return. 
But  may  you  at  least  hope  to  see  once  more 
the  face  you  love,  as  it  was.  Alas!  You 
will  perhaps  have  the  illusion  of  seeing 
it  thus,  but  it  will  not  be  reality,  for  the 
days,  as  they  vanish  into  the  night,  carry 
off  with  them  somewhat  of  the  counte- 
nances of  men  as  a  remembrance.  It  may 
well  be  that  with  these  tiny  bits  they 
fashion  brand  new  faces,  yonder  in  the 
chimerical  world,  but  that  is  not  at  all  sure. 

No,  never  the  same,  never.  Slowly  or 
rapidly,  an  indefatigable  motion  whirls 
everything  about  in  a  farandola  whose 
ends  never  can  meet.  The  year  passes 
by:  one  day  more!  The  day  passes  by: 
an  hour  longer!  The  hour  passes  by: 
only  another  minute!  In  vain.  But  all 
this  will  at  least  come  back?  I  have  al- 
ready told  you,  No.  Why  insist?  Bow 
to  fate. 

One  never  crosses  the  same  river  twice, 
said  the  Greek  philosopher,  and  if  this  be 

177 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  •  PARIS 

to  some  a  source  of  bitterness,  others  will 
find  in  it  good  reason  to  take  heart.  The 
latter  are  those  whose  memories  are  filled 
chiefly  with  evil  days.  Let  them,  then, 
be  content.  Neither  will  they  ever  behold 
the  same  days.  Tears  flow  and  smiles 
fade  to  the  same  rhythm  of  life,  to  dis- 
appear together  in  the  bottomless  abyss. 

Nothing  returns,  nothing  begins  anew; 
it  is  never  the  same  thing,  and  yet  it  seems 
always  the  same.  For,  if  the  days  never 
return,  every  moment  brings  forth  new 
beings  whose  destiny  it  will  be  to  create 
for  themselves,  in  the  course  of  their  lives, 
the  same  illusions  that  have  companioned 
and  at  times  illuminated  ours.  The  fabric 
is  eternal;  eternal,  the  embroidery.  A 
universe  dies  when  we  die;  another  is  born 
when  a  new  creature  comes  to  earth  with 
a  new  sensibility.  If,  then,  it  is  very  true 
that  nothing  begins  all  over  again,  it  is 
very  just  to  say,  too,  that  everything  con- 
tinues. One  may  fearlessly  advance  the 
latter  statement  or  the  former,  according 

178 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

to  whether  one  considers  the  individual 
or  the  blending  of  generations.  From 
this  second  point  of  view,  everything  is 
coexistent;  the  same  cause  produces  con- 
tradictory, yet  logical  effects.  All  the 
colors  and  their  shades  are  printed  at  a 
single  impression,  to  form  the  wonderful 
image  we  call  life. 

And  there  is  neither  beginning  nor  end, 
nor  past  nor  future;  there  is  only  a  present, 
at  the  same  time  static  and  ephemeral,  mul- 
tiple and  absolute. 

It  is  the  vital  ocean  in  which  we  all 
share,  according  to  our  strength,  our  needs 
or  our  desires.  Then  what  matters  that 
which  we  call  the  fall  of  the  days  or  the 
fall  of  the  leaves? 

Neither  the  leaves  nor  the  days  fall  at 
the  same  time  for  all  men,  and  the  hour 
that  marks  the  end  of  a  year  is  likewise 
that  which  marks  the  birth  of  another. 

It  is  thus  I  dream,  during  these  closing 
days  of  December,  of  life  which  is  nothing, 
since  it  dies  incessantly,  and  which  is  all, 

179 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  .  IN  •  PARIS 

since  it  is  ceaselessly  reborn.  It  is  the 
drop  of  water  that  flows  off  as  soon  as  it 
falls,  but  which  is  followed  by  another 
drop  that  presses  upon  it  in  its  course. 
We  are  that,  nothing  but  that, —  drops  of 
water  that  are  formed,  fall,  and  flow  away; 
and  during  such  brief  moments  we  never- 
theless have  the  time  to  create  a  world  and 
live  in  it.  It  is  the  nobility  and  the  mys- 
tery of  life  that  it  should  be  of  such  little 
account  and  yet  be  capable  of  such  great 
things,  for  the  most  humble  creature  is 
still  very  important, —  one  of  the  atoms 
without  which  the  mass  would  possess 
neither  its  proper  weight  nor  form.  It  has 
its  part  in  the  universal  movement;  it  is 
one  of  the  elements  of  the  movement's 
equilibrium  and  its  periodicity. 

Each  one,  then,  should  love  his  life, 
even  though  it  be  not  very  attractive,  for 
it  is  the  only  life.  It  is  a  boon  that  will 
never  return  and  that  each  person  should 
tend  and  enjoy  with  care;  it  is  one's  capi- 
tal, large  or  small,  and  can  not  be  treated 
1 80 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  .  IN  .  PARIS 

as  an  investment  like  those  whose  divi- 
dends are  payable  through  eternity.  Life 
is  an  annuity;  nothing  is  more  certain 
than  that.  So  that  all  efforts  are  to  be 
respected  that  tend  to  ameliorate  the 
tenure  of  this  perishable  possession  which, 
at  the  end  of  every  day,  has  already  lost 
a  little  of  its  value.  Eternity,  the  bait  by 
which  simple  folk  are  still  lured,  is  not 
situated  beyond  life,  but  in  life  itself,  and 
is  divided  among  all  men,  all  creatures. 
Each  of  us  holds  but  a  small  portion  of  it, 
but  that  share  is  so  precious  that  it  suffices 
to  enrich  the  poorest.  Let  us  then  take 
the  bitter  and  the  sweet  in  confidence,  and 
when  the  fall  of  the  days  seems  to  whirl 
about  us,  let  us  remember  that  dusk  is 
also  dawn. 


iSi 


THE  BEYOND 


THE  BEYOND 

MUCH  is  being  said  of  the  beyond 
in  these  days,  perhaps  because 
people  no  longer  believe  in  it. 
Then  there  is  Eusapia  Palladino,  whose 
performances,  it  seems,  favor  mysterious 
beliefs.  Tables  dance  and  tilt,  violins  play 
by  themselves,  and  this  puts  perspicacious 
folk  on  the  road  to  the  beyond.  Huysmans 
was  converted  in  just  this  way.  It  is  far 
easier  to  confuse  the  human  reason  than 
the  laws  of  gravity. 

Nevertheless,  what  is  the  beyond?  I 
believe  only  in  that  country  which  I  can 
locate.  Where  do  you  place  it?  The 
spirits  locate  it  about  us.  Do  you  wish  to 
speak  with  Mme.  de  Montespan?  Here 
she  is.  With  Napoleon?  He  hastens  to 
185 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  -  IN  ■  PARIS 

respond.  Would  you  consult  Saint  An- 
thony in  regard  to  some  lost  object? 
Nothing  more  easy.  The  inhabitants  of 
the  beyond  are  at  our  disposal.  They 
come  as  soon  as  they  are  bidden  and  reply 
most  gently.  And  in  order  to  prove 
that  the  two  realms  bear  a  strong  resem- 
blance to  each  other,  they  are  even  glad  to 
talk  plenty  of  nonsense:  their  intelligence 
never  rises  above  the  level  of  those  who 
summon  them. 

This  benevolent  and  familiar  beyond 
does  not,  however,  win  universal  approval. 
The  immense  majority  of  believers  need  a 
truly  mysterious  beyond,  one  that  shall  be 
inaccessible  and  unfathomable.  Where  is 
this  beyond?  Yonder,  yonder,  very  far 
away. —  But  just  where? — Far,  far  off,  I 
tell  you;  farther  than  you  could  ever 
calculate. —  And  how  are  you  assured  of 
its  reality?  —  By  reason  itself.  It  is  im- 
possible that  man  should  die  totally.  This 
is  proved  by  his  very  desire  for  immor- 
tality. 

186 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  ■  IN  .  PARIS 

The  early  Christians  were  not  in  the 
least  embarrassed  in  the  matter  of  placing 
heaven.  They  beheld  it  on  high,  beyond 
the  clouds,  in  a  brilliant,  serene  region. 
Christ,  by  his  ascension,  had  shown  them 
the  way.  The  expression  has  gone  into 
the  language:  to  rise  to  heaven.  It  no 
longer  means  anything  since  it  has  become 
known  that  the  earth  rotates  on  its  own 
axis  and  that,  consequently,  there  is  for  us 
in  space  neither  above  nor  below.  In 
order  to  rise  to  heaven  at  midnight  one 
would  have  to  take  the  same  direction  by 
which,  at  noon,  he  would  descend.  Heaven, 
then,  cannot  be  situated  on  high.  As  to 
hell,  which  was  formerly  placed  in  the 
interior  of  the  earth,  let  us  not  speak. 
The  theologians  of  today  make  many 
reservations  as  to  hell;  they  have  learned 
that  the  prospect  of  cooking  eternally  in 
a  huge  caldron  is  not  of  a  nature  to  excite 
much  religious  enthusiasm  in  the  crowds. 
The  beyond  to  which  we  are  invited  is  a 
benign  place.     It  is  not  quite  the  paradise 

187 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

of  Mahomet;  it  is  that  of  Fenelon, —  a 
perfumed  landscape  where  the  streams  are 
of  milk,  the  pebbles  of  candy,  the  soil  of 
chocolate.  It  still  remains  to  locate  this 
celestial  confectionery  in  space. 

Some  have  thought  of  the  planets.  But 
suppose  they  are  really  inhabited,  as  M. 
Flammarion  hopes,  and  as  is  moreover 
fairly  probable?  Then  let  us  seek  farther, 
farther  still.  Let  us  question  the  utter- 
most stars, —  those  which  our  naked  eye 
cannot  see, —  even  those  that  the  tele- 
scopes will  never  discover. 

Their  answer  is  known.  They  reply 
that  they  are  worlds,  suns,  surrounded  by 
earths,  some  living  like  ours,  others  dead 
like  the  moon.  Analogy  permits  us  to 
believe  that  what  we  do  not  see  resembles 
greatly  what  we  do  see.  If  we  were  trans- 
ported to  the  regions  where  simple  folk 
place  the  beyond,  we  would  turn  back  to 
our  own  earth  and  say,  doubtless:  The 
beyond  is  situated  yonder. 

There  is  no  reasonably  conceivable  be- 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

yond.  The  entire  universe  is  built  upon 
the  same  plan  and  its  component  parts 
are  limited  by  nothing.  An  immensity  in 
which  grains  of  sand  whirl  about  at  the 
mercy  of  the  wind  of  infinity. 

Beyond?  Beyond  what?  One  must 
know  what  he  is  talking  about.  We  are 
creatures  habituated  to  precision.  When 
a  man  of  the  fourteenth-century  thought 
of  future  life,  his  notion  was  very  simple, 
but  fairly  clear.  He  beheld  the  blessed 
ranged  upon  the  steps  of  a  vast  stage.  In 
the  background  was  an  organ,  played  by 
an  angel,  and  the  music  was  so  sweet  that 
the  whole  audience  was  spell-bound:  and 
this  was  to  continue  for  all  eternity! 
Today  we  would  with  difficulty  accept 
such  a  paradise  fashioned  in  the  manner 
familiar  to  the  devotees  of  large  concerts. 
A  little  variety  would  be  welcome.  The 
taste  for  extended  travel,  for  example,  has 
gradually  influenced  the  notion  that  cer- 
tain persons  form  of  the  blessed  life. 
Whereupon    it    becomes    a    paradise    for 

189 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  •  IN  •  PARIS 

Cook's  tourists.  Excursions  are  made  to 
the  rings  of  Saturn,  just  as,  in  their  earthly 
life,  they  journeyed  to  the  White  Nile  or 
to  Japan.  Somewhat  farther  than  the 
first,  but  of  the  same  genre. 

The  most  ardent  travelers  rise,  in  their 
imaginations,  from  sun  to  sun,  thrilled 
with  the  idea  of  a  never-ending  exploration 
filled  with  ever-renewed  wonders. 

These  perpetual  vacations  seem  a  bit 
boresome  to  me.  What  will  be  proposed 
to  me  next?  Here  are  the  modern  religions 
and  philosophies,  the  Christians  and  the 
spiritualists,  who  offer  me  the  contempla- 
tion of  God.  Very  well.  But  God  is  no 
more  admirable  in  the  rings  of  Saturn  or 
in  Sirius  than  in  the  wings  of  a  butterfly 
or  in  the  eyes  of  a  woman.  What  next? 
Wait.  You  speak  of  a  woman, —  doubtless 
of  her  whom  you  love?  Here  is  the  para- 
dise of  Mahomet,  with  its  white,  buxom 
houris,  their  hands  ever  perfumed,  their 
caresses  ever  new. 

Yes,  that  is  more  tempting.     It  is  human, 

190 


PHILOSOPHIC  •  NIGHTS  .  IN  ■  PARIS 

at  least.  But  do  the  women,  too,  find 
lovers  to  their  taste  there?  This  paradise 
bears  too  much  resemblance  to  a  conquered 
town,  where  the  victors  disport  themselves 
with  the  women  captives.  And  it  re- 
sembles altogether  too  much  something 
less  honest.  At  the  end  of  an  hour  I 
should  feel  like  leaving. 

Well,  suppose  we  remain  upon  earth, 
after  all?  Suppose  we  bravely  accept  the 
death  of  our  dreams  at  the  same  time  as 
the  death  of  our  bodies?  This  beyond  is 
decidedly  uncertain,  quite  vague  and  mobile. 
I  do  not  believe  that  it  exists  everywhere; 
I  believe  that  it  is  nowhere  except  in  our 
infantile  imaginations.  Born  with  us,  it 
will  end  at  the  same  moment  that  we  do, 
to  be  born  anew  in  our  posterity. 

The  beyond  is  the  earthly  tomorrow, 
as  we  bequeath  it  to  our  heirs  and  as  they 
modify  it  by  their  efforts  and  in  accordance 
with  their  tastes. 


191 


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